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10 ,  I ,  ^c 

LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,  N.  J. 
Presented  by 

Heroer-V  AcicTinns  Gn\D\oon'=> , 

BV  130  .D2  1882 

Dabney,  Robert  Lewis,  1820 

1898. 
The  Christian  Sabbath 


OCT  1    1920 


THE  .    ^^  ^^ 


CHRISTIAN  SABBATH: 

ITS  NATURE,  DESIGN 


PROPER  OBSERVANCE. 


BY  THE 

Rev.  R.  l/dABNEY,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

Professor  of  Systematic  and  Pastoral  Theology  in  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary,  Hamp  den-Sidney,  Va. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OF  PUBLICATION, 

No.  V.>U  Chestnut  Street. 


COPYRIGHT,    1882,    BY 

THE  TRUSTEES  OF  THE 

PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OP  PUBLICATION. 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED. 


Westcott  &  Thomson, 
Stereotypers  and  Electrotypers,  Philada. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH: 

Its  Nature,  Design  and  Proper  Observance. 


IT  must  be  confessed  that  the  Christian  world  now 
presents  an  anomalous  condition  touching  the 
Sabbath.  Strict  Protestants  usually  profess  in  the- 
ory the  views  once  peculiar  to  Presbyterians,  and 
admit  that  the  proper  observance  of  the  Sabbath 
is  a  bulwark  of  practical  Christianity.  But  their 
practice  does  not  always  correspond  with  their  the- 
ory. In  actual  life  there  is,  among  good  people,  a 
great  uncertainty,  with  a  corresponding  confusion 
of  usages,  from  great  laxity  up  to  the  sacred  strict- 
ness of  our  pious  forefathers.  It  is  greatly  to  be 
feared  that  those  in  the  Church  who  tolerate  this 
laxity  are  increasing  in  numbers  and  influence. 
The  civil  law,  which  guarantees  the  Sabbath  rest 
to  all  as  a  secular  benefit  and  right,  is  enforced  with 
more  and  more  difficulty,  especially  in  populous 
places;  and  this  law  is  disregarded  with  increas- 
ing boldness  by  powerful  corporations  and  by  those 
who  oifer  amusements  and  sensual  enjoyments  to  the 
public.  Hence  the  wisest  friends  of  truth  and  good 
have  taken  the  alarm.     The  aim  of  this  treatise  is 

3 


4  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

to*'give  some  humble  help  in  this  good  cause  by- 
proving  the  divine  and  perpetual  authority  of 
God's  holy  day. 

It  will  appear  singular  to  the  thoughtful  ob- 
server that  the  consciences  of  devout  and  sincere 
persons  leave  them  room  for  such  license  in  their 
Sabbath  observance,  while  in  all  other  things  they 
show  themselves  honest  Christians,  sincerely  gov- 
erned by  their  convictions  of  truth  and  duty.  The 
explanation  is,  that  men's  convictions  touching  the 
claims  of  the  Sabbath  are  not  clear.  And  this  con- 
fusion of  opinions  is  to  be  traced  to  a  fact  of  which 
many,  perhaps,  who  experience  its  injurious  effects 
are  not  aware — that  the  Protestant  communions 
founded  after  the  great  Keformation  were  widely 
and  avowedly  divided  in  their  opinions  on  this 
duty.  In  our  mixed  population  in  America  the 
descendants  of  these  different  communions  live  dis- 
persed among  each  other,  and  oftentimes  are  found 
in  the  same  churches.  They  have  lost  sight  of  the 
opposing  doctrines,  the  one  asserting  that  the  Lord's 
day  is  still  God's  Sabbath,  and  tlie  other  denying  it 
— doctrines  once  honestly  held  by  their  respective 
forefathers.  But  the  usages,  strict  or  loose,  which 
consistently  flowed  from  these  convictions,  scriptural 
or  erroneous,  cleave  to  the  descendants.  These  lax 
customs,  by  example,  influence  multitudes  of  other 
Christians.  Thus,  many  persons  weakly  lapse  into 
breaches  of  the  Sabbath  law  for  which  they  have 
not  even  the  partial  excuse  of  an  erroneous  opinion 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH  5 

honestly  adoptecl ;  and  they  violate  their  own  pro- 
fessed doctrine,  feebly  and  unintelligently  held, 
with  a  looseness  of  conscience  greater  than  that  of 
the  Euro])ean  Protestants  whom  we  condemn  for 
avowedly  neglecting  the  Sabbath.  Hence,  a  brief 
historical  statement  will  be  instructive,  and  Avill 
prepare  the  way  for  our  appeal  to  God's  word.  It 
will  not  be  necessary  tbr  the  purpose  in  view  to  en- 
cumber this  statement  with  names  and  authorities, 
or  to  detail  the  names  of  the  churches  and  men  who 
held  the  one  or  the  other  side. 

It  may  be  said,  in  general  terms,  that  since  the 
days  of  primitive  Christianity  there  has  existed  a 
difference  of  opinion  in  the  Christian  world  as  to 
the  authority  upon  which  the  Lord's  day  should  be 
observed.  The  Reformation  did  not  extinguish,  but 
rather  defined  and  fixed,  that  difference.  The  wrong 
side,  as  we  conceive  it,  was  held  not  only  by  papists, 
but  by  some  of  the  great  Reformers,  and  error  was 
by  them  planted  in  some  of  the  Protestant  churches. 
According  to  that  opinion,  the  sanctification  of  one 
day  from  every  seven  was  a  ceremonial,  typical  and 
Levitical  custom,  and  it  was  therefore  abrogated 
when  a  better  dispensation  came,  along  w^ith  other 
shadows  of  spiritual  blessings.  These  persons  ad- 
mit that  the  Lord's  day  deserves  observance  as  a 
Christian  festival,  because  it  is  a  weekly  memorial 
of  the  blessed  resurrection,  and  because  the  exam- 
ple of  the  Church  and  the  enactments  of  her  synods 
support  it,  but  not  because  it  is  now  a  commandment 


6  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

of  God.  Weekly  rest  from  worldly  labors  is  a  so- 
cial and  civil  blessing,  they  say,  very  properly  se- 
cured by  the  laws  of  the  commonwealth,  and  so 
long  as  these  laws  are  in  force  every  good  citizen 
must  of  course  comply  with  them.  Public  and 
associated  worship  of  God  is  also  a  scriptural  duty 
of  Christians.  But  in  order  that  they  may  join  in 
these  acts  of  worship  they  must  agree  upon  some 
stated  day  and  place ;  and  what  day  so  suitable  as 
this  first  day  of  the  week,  which  is  already  made  a 
day  of  leisure  from  secular  cares  by  the  law  of  the 
commonwealth,  crowned  with  pious  associations  and 
commemorative  of  the  grand  event  of  the  gospel 
history,  Christ's  rising  from  the  dead  ?  But  this, 
they  say,  is  all.  To  sanctify  the  whole  day  as  a  re- 
ligious rest  under  the  supposed  authority  of  a  divine 
command  is  judaizing ;  it  is  burdening  our  necks 
with  the  bondage  of  a  merely  positive  and  typical 
ceremony  which  belonged  to  a  darker  dispensa- 
tion. 

The  second  opinion  is  that  embodied  ih  the  West- 
minster Confession  ;  and  to  the  honor  of  the  Pres- 
byterian branches  of  the  Protestant  body  it  may  be 
asserted  that  these  have  been,  since  the  Reformation, 
the  most  intelligent  and  decided  supporters  of  it. 
These  Christians  believe  that  the  sanctification  of 
some  stated  portion  of  time,  such  as  God  may  select, 
to  his  worship,  is  a  duty  of  perpetual  obligation  for 
all  ages,  dispensations  and  nations,  as  truly  as  the 
other  unchangeable  duties  of  morals  and  religion ; 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  7 

and  that  the  Sabbath  command  has  been  to  this  ex- 
tent always  a  "moral"  one,  as  distinguished  from  a 
"  positive,*  ceremonial "  one.  They  believe  that  God 
selected  one-seventh  as  his  proper  portion  of  time 
at  the  creation,  at  Sinai,  and  again  at  the  incom- 
ing of  the  last  dispensation.  But  when  the  cere- 
monial law  was  for  a  particular,  temporary  purpose 
added  to  the  original,  patriarchal  dispensation,  the 
seventh  day  became  also  for  a  time  a  Levitical  holy 
day  and  a  type.  This  temporary  feature  has  of 
course  passed  away  with  the  Jewish  institutions. 
Upon  the  resurrection  of  Christ  the  original  Sab- 
bath obligation  was  by  God  fixed  upon  the  first  day 
of  the  week,  because  this  day  completed  a  second 
work  even  more  glorious  and  beneficent  than  the 
world^s  creation  by  the  rising  of  Christ  from  the 
tomb.  Hence,  from  that  date  to  the  end  of  the 
world  the  Lord's  day  is,  by  divine  and  apostolic 
authority,  substantially  what  the  Sabbath  day  was 
originally   to   God's   people.      It   is    literally   the 

*  Most  of  God's  commands  are  simply  expressions  of  the  es- 
sential and  unchangeable  rightness  of  the  things  commanded, 
as  when  we  are  enjoined  to  speak  truth  and  love  God.  These 
precepts  divines  call  "  moral "  or  "  permanent  moral."  The 
things  are  commanded  because  they  are  right  in  tliemselves. 
But  some  things  God  commands  or  forbids  for  wise  reasons 
which,  without  his  precept,  would  not  be  of  themselves  right 
or  wrong.  Such  was  the  prohibition  to  the  Jews  to  eat  swines' 
flesh.  These  precepts  the  divines  term  "  positive."  The  things 
are  right  or  wrong  only  so  long  as,  and  only  because,  God  en- 
joins and  prohibits  them.  Many  ceremonial  commands,  rules 
about  ceremonies,  are  of  this  kind. 


8  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

"Christian  Sabbath,"  and  is  to  be  observed  with 
the  same  sanctity  as  it  was  by  the  patriarchs. 

The  great  synod  which  most  truly  in  modern  ages 
propounded  this  doctrine  of  the  Lord's  day  was  tlie 
Westminster  Assembly.  Its  Confession  of  Faith  is 
now  the  standard  of  the  Scotch,  the  Irish  and  the 
American  Presbyterian  churches,  as  well  as  of  some 
independent  bodies.  It  puts  the  truth  so  luminously 
that  its  words,  though  familiar  to  many  readers,  are 
repeated  here  as  the  best  statement  of  what  is  to  be 
proved  in  the  subsequent  discussion :  * 

"As  it  is  of  the  law  of  nature  that  in  general  a 
due  proportion  of  time  be  set  apart  for  the  worship 
of  God,  so  in  his  word,  by  a  positive,  moral  and 
perpetual  commandment,  binding  all  men  in  all 
ages,  he  hath  particularly  appointed  one  day  in 
seven  for  a  Sabbath,  to  be  kept  holy  unto  him, 
which,  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  to  the  res- 
urrection of  Christ  was  the  last  day  of  the  week,  and 
from  the  resurrection  of  Christ  was  changed  into  the 
first  day  of  the  week,  which  in  Scripture  is  called 
the  Lord's  day,  and  is  to  be  continued  to  the  end 
of  the  world  as  the  Christian  Sabbath. 

"The  Sabbath  is  then  kept  holy  unto  the  Lord 
when  men,  after  a  due  preparing  of  their  hearts  and 
ordering  of  their  common  affairs  beforehand,  do  not 
only  observe  an  holy  rest  all  the  day  from  their  own 
works,  words  and  thoughts  about  their  worldly  em- 
ployments and  recreations,  but  also  are  taken  up 
*  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith,  xxi.,  |§  7,  8. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  9 

the  whole  time  in  the  public  and  private  exercises  of 
his  worship  and  in  the  duties  of  necessity  and  mercy." 

The  attempt  will  now  be  made  to  give  a  brief 
and  plain  statement  of  the  grounds  upon  which  this 
position  rests.     And, 

First.  The  Sabbath  law  is  contained  in  the  Dec- 
alogue. None  will  dispute  this  proposition :  That 
if  this  is  "a  positive,  moral  and  perpetual  com- 
mandment, binding  all  men  in  all  ages,''  the  change 
from  the  Jewish  to  the  Christian  dispensation  has 
not  removed  its  divine  authority  over  us.  Not  be- 
ing "positive  and  ceremonial"  like  the  Jewish 
rules  of  meats,  new  moons  and  sacrifices,  it  has  not 
passed  away  along  with  the  other  Jewish  shadows. 
Let  us,  then,  test  the  truth  of  the  former  position — 
that  the  Sabbath  command  in  the  Decalo2:ue  was 
"  moral  and  perpetual." 

The  argument  will  pursue  this  plain  and  fair 
course:  If  this  command  was  not  for  the  first  time 
introduced  by  the  Levitical  economy,  but  was  in 
full  force  before,  and  if  it  was  binding  not  on  Jews 
only,  but  on  all  men,  then  the  abrogation  of  that 
dispensation  cannot  have  abrogated  it,  because  it 
did  not  institute  it. 

We  are  but  using  logic  parallel  to  that  which  the 
apostle  Paul  employs  in  a  similar  case.  He  is  prov- 
ing that  the  gospel  promise  made  to  the  Hebrews 
in  Abraham  could  not  have  been  retracted  when 
the  law  was  published  on  Sinai.  His  argument  is 
(Gal.  3  :  17):   "The  covenant  that  was  confirmed 


10  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

before  of  God  in  Christ,  the  law,  which  was  four 
hundred  and  thirty  years  after,  cannot  disannul." 
So  reason  we :  If  the  Sabbath  was  instituted  long 
before,  it  did  not  come  with  Judaism,  and  does  not 
go  with  it.  It  is  instructive  to  note  that  those  Chris- 
tian Fathers  who  gave  countenance  to  the  idea  that 
the  divine  injunction  of  the  Sabbath  was  abrogated 
also  leaned  to  the  opinion  that  the  Sabbath  was  of 
Mosaic  origin.  This  indirectly  confirms  the  sound- 
ness of  our  inference,  while  it  betrays  their  slender 
acquaintance  with  the  Old-Testament  Scriptures. 
The  anti-Sabbath  opinion  in  the  Christian  Church 
had  its  origin  in  error  and  ignorance  among  the 
early,  uninspired  teachers. 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  Sabbath  is  of  moral  and 
perpetual  authority  from  these  facts :  There  is  a  reason 
in  the  nature  of  things,  making  such  an  institution 
essential  to  man's  religious  welfare  and  duty;  and 
this- necessity  is  substantially  the  same  in  all  ages  and 
nations.  That  it  is  man's  duty  to  worship  God  none 
with  whom  we  now  deal  will  dispute.  Nor  will  it 
be  denied  that  this  worship  should  be  in  part  social, 
because  man  is  a  being  of  social  affections  and  sub- 
ject to  social  obligations,  and  because  one  of  the 
great  ends  of  worship  is  the  display  of  the  divine 
glory  before  our  fellow-creatures.  Social  worship 
cannot  be  conducted  without  the  appointment  of  a 
stated  day ;  and  who  can  authoritatively  appoint 
that  day  except  the  God  who  is  the  object  of  the 
worship?     For  the  cultivation  of  our   individual 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  11 

devotion  and  piety  a  periodical  season  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  creatures  of  habit  and  finite  capacities 
like  us.  What  is  not  regularly  done  will  soon  be 
omitted,  for  we  are  dependent  on  habit;  and  of  this 
periodical  recurrence  is  the  very  foundation.  AVe 
are  by  nature  carnal  and  sensuous  beings ;  we  are 
prone  to  walk  by  sense  instead  of  faith.  The  things 
which  are  seen,  but  temporal,  are  ever  obscuring  the 
things  which  are  unseen,  but  eternal.  If  such  crea- 
tures were  left  to  themselves  to  appropriate  to  spir- 
itual interests  only  such  irregular  seasons  as  they 
should  select  of  their  own  motion,  it  is  very  plain 
that  the  final  issue  would  be  the  total  neglect  and 
omission  of  the  interests  of  eternity.  This  conclu- 
sion is  fully  confirmed  by  experience,  for  among 
nominal  Christians,  where  the  Sabbath  is  entirely 
neglected,  the  result  is  always  a  practical  godless- 
ness  among  the  people;  and  it  is  believed  that  even 
among  Mohammedans  and  pagans  the  employment 
of  some  stated  holy  days  has  been  found  essential  to 
the  existence  of  those  religions.  The  tribes  which 
have  no  holy  day,  the  obligation  of  whose  observ- 
ance is  believed  by  them  to  be  from  their  gods,  are 
those  which,  like  the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa 
and  the  Australian  blacks,  are  almost  as  devoid  of 
religious  ideas  and  as  degraded  as  the  apes  of  their 
native  w^ilds.  It  seems  absolutely  necessary  that 
man's  unstable  religious  sentiments  be  fixed  for 
him  by  having  them  attached  by  divine  authority 
to  a  sacred  day  and  an  appointed  worship. 


12  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

But  it  is  a  well-known  maxim  in  morals  that 
when  a  certain  work  is  obligatory,  the  necessary- 
means  for  its  performance  are  equally  obligatory. 
The  question  whether  the  Sabbath  command  is 
moral  or  positive  seems,  therefore,  to  admit  of  a 
very  simple  solution.  Whether  one  day  in  six  or 
one  in  eight  might  not  have  seemed  to  the  divine 
wisdom  admissible  for  its  purpose,  or  which  day  of 
the  seven,  the  first  or  the  last,  should  be  consecrated 
to  it,  or  what  ought  to  be  the  particular  forms  of  its 
worship, — these  things,  we  admit,  are  of  merely  pos- 
itive institution,  and  may  be  changed  by  the  divine 
Legislator.  But  that  man  shall  have  his  stated  pe- 
riod of  worship  enjoined  upon  him  is  as  truly  a  dic- 
tate of  the  natural  conscience  and  as  immediate  a 
result  of  our  relation  to  God  as  that  man  shall 
worship  his  God  at  all.  And  no  reason  can  be 
shown  why  this  obligation  was  more  or  less  strin- 
gent upon  Israelites  of  the  Mosaic  period  than  on 
men  before  or  since  them. 

Having  found  the  observance  of  some  stated  and 
recurring  season  essential  to  that  worship  of  God 
which  is  naturally  and  perpetually  incumbent  on 
us,  we  ask,  By  whom  shall  the  season  be  selected 
and  enforced? — by  man  or  by  God?  If  the  great 
duty  of  worship  is  essentially  and  morally  binding, 
this  necessary  provision  for  compliance  is  also  essen- 
tially and  morally  binding.  Whose  is  the  reason- 
able and  natural  authority  for  providing  and  enfor- 
cing it? — the  creature's  or  the  Lord's?     To  ask  this 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  13 

question  is  to  answer  it.  Obviously,  this  provision 
ought  to  be  fixed  by  the  Lord,  to  whom  the  wor- 
ship is  due.  It  is  his  right  to  settle  it.  He  alone 
has  the  authority  to  enforce  it.  The  purposes  of 
social  and  concerted  worship  require  uniformity  in 
the  season.  Now,  the  Jew  says  each  seventh  day, 
the  Christian  says  that  each  first  day,  is  the  proper 
season.  If  this  is  left  to  mere  human  authority,  the 
Christian  has  no  more  right  to  dictate  his  preference 
to  the  Jew  than  the  Jew  to  force  his  on  the  Chris- 
tian. No  uniformity  can  be  had.  Clearly,  the  select- 
ing and  enforcing  of  the  proper  day  does  not  belong 
to  Jew  or  Christian,  but  to  the  divine  Lord. 

We  argue,  further,  that  the  enactment  of  the  Sab- 
bath law  does  not  date  from  Moses,  but  was  coeval 
with  the  human  race.  It  is  one  of  the  first  two  in- 
titutions  of  Paradise.  The  sanctification  of  the 
(lay  took  place  from  the  very  end  of  the  week  of 
creation.  For  whose  observance  was  the  day,  then, 
consecrated  or  set  apart,  if  not  for  man's  ?  Not  for 
God's  observance,  because  the  glorious  paradox  is 
for  ever  true  of  him  that  his  blessed  quiet  is  as 
everlasting  as  his  ceaseless  activity.  Not  for  the 
angels',  surely.  But  for  Adam's.  Doubtless,  Eden 
witnessed  the  sacred  rest  of  him  and  his  consort  from 

"  the  toil 
Of  their  sweet  gardening  labor,  which  sufficed 
To  recommend  cool  zephyr,  and  made  ease 
More  easy,  wholesome  thirst  and  appetite 
More  grateful." 


14  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

And  from  that  time  downward  we  have  indications, 
brief  indeed,  but  as  numerous  as  we  can  expect  in 
the  compendious  record  of  Genesis,  and  sufficient 
to  show  us  that  the  Sabbath  continued  to  be  an 
institution  of  the  patriarchal  religion.  A  slight 
probable  evidence  of  this  may  be  seen  in  the  fact 
that  seven  has  ever  been  a  sacred  and  symbolical 
number  among  ancient  patriarchs,  Israelites  and 
pagans.  In  Genesis  we  read  of  the  "seven  clean 
beasts,"  the  "  seven  well-favored  "  and  '*  seven  lean 
kine,"  the  "seven  ears  of  corn  rank  and  good." 
Now,  there  is  no  natural  sign  in  the  heavens  or 
earth  to  suggest  the  number,  for  no  heavenly  body  or 
natural  element  revolves  In  precisely  seven  months, 
days  or  hours,  nor  do  any  of  man's  external  mem- 
bers number  seven.  Whence,  then,  the  peculiar 
idea  attached  so  early  to  the  number.  If  not  from 
the  Institution  of  the  week  for  our  first  parents? 
But  to  proceed  to  more  solid  facts.  The  "end 
of  days"  or  "return  of  days"  (Gen.  4  :  3),  rendered 
in  our  version  "process  of  time,"  at  which  Cain  and 
Abel  offered  their  sacrifices,  was  most  likely  the  end 
of  the  week,  the  Sabbath  day.  In  Gen.  7  :  10  we 
find  God  himself  observing  the  w'eekly  Interval  in 
the  preparations  for  the  Flood.  We  find  another 
clear  hint  of  the  observance  of  this  weekly  division 
of  time  by  Noah  and  his  family  in  their  floating 
prison.  In  Gen.  8  :  10-12  the  patriarch  twice 
waited  a  period  of  seven  days  to  send  out  his  dove. 
From  Gen.  29  :  27  we  learn  that  It  was  customary 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  15 

among  the  patriarchs  of  Mesopotamia  in  the  days 
of  Laban  to  continue  a  wedding-festival  a  week; 
and  the  very  term  of  service  rendered  by  Jacob  for 
his  two  wives  shows  the  use  made  of  the  number 
seven  as  the  customary  duration  of  a  contract  for 
domestic  service.  Gen.  50  :  10  shows  us  that  at  the 
time  of  Jacob's  death  a  week  was  also  the  length  of 
the  most  honorable  funeral  exercises.  In  Ex.  12  : 
3-20  we  find  the  first  institution  of  the  passover, 
when  as  yet  there  were  no  Levitical  institutions. 
This  feast  was  also  appointed  to  last  a  week.  In 
Ex.  16  :  22-30,  where  we  read  the  first  account  of 
the  manna,  we  find  the  Sabbath  observance  already 
in  full  force  ;  and  no  candid  mind  will  say  that  this 
is  the  history  of  its  first  enactment.  It  is  spoken 
of  as  a  rest  with  which  the  people  ought  to  have 
been  familiar.  But  the  people  had  not  yet  come  to 
Sinai,  and  none  of  its  institutions  had  been  given. 
Here,  then,  ^ve  have  the  Sabbath  rest  enforced  on 
Israel  before  the  ceremonial  law  was  set  up,  and 
two  weekly  variations  wrought  in  the  standing  mir- 
acles of  the  manna  in  order  to  facilitate  its  observ- 
ance. 

This  fact  is  so  fatal  to  the  doctrine  that  the  Sab- 
bath was  only  a  Levitical  ordinance  that  opponents 
have  attempted  to  deny  the  force  of  it.  They  say 
that  Moses  now,  for  the  first  time,  anticipating  the 
law  of  Sinai  by  a  few  days,  gave  the  Hebrews  the 
Sabbath  on  the  occasion  of  the  manna's  beginning  to 
fall.     They  would  have  us  believe  that  the  people 


16  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

liaci  never  heard  of  the  Sabbath  before.  This  con- 
struction they  force  on  the  twenty-third  verse: 
"And  he  said  unto  them,  This  is  that  which  the 
Lord  hath  said  :  To-morrow  is  the  rest  of  the  holy 
Sabbath  unto  the  Lord,"  etc.  But  we  answer: 
Moses  does  not  say  or  imply  that  this  was  the  first 
time  the  Lord  said  the  seventh  day  was  holy.  On 
the  contrary,  the  drift  of  the  whole  narrative  shows 
that  the  Lord  was  now,  by  Moses,  referring  the  peo- 
ple to  their  former  knowledge  of  the  sanctity  of  the 
Sabbath  as  an  explanation  of  their  finding  no  manna 
on  that  day.  No  fair  reader  can  compare  the  words 
with  Gen.  2  :  3  without  seeing  this.  But  especially 
does  the  twenty-second  verse  of  chap.  16  prove  our 
view  and  refute  the  other.  The  people  had,  on  the 
sixth  day,  already  begun  to  make  preparations  for 
the  rest  of  the  seventh  by  gathering  two  portions 
of  manna,  before  Moses  or  the  elders  had  said  one 
word  to  them  about  it !  Their  doing  so  was  what 
prompted  the  elders  to  make  the  inquiry  of  Moses. 
Thus  it  appears  beyond  question  that  the  Hebrews 
did  know  of  God's  command  to  hallow  the  Sab- 
bath, and  were  in  the  general  (not  universal)  habit 
of  honoring  it,  before  ever  the  manna  had  fallen  or 
Moses  had  said  a  word  about  the  duty. 

But  let  us  proceed  to  Sinai.  When  the  Sabbath 
command  is  there  repeated  it  is  stated  in  terms 
which  clearly  imply  that  it  was  known  before  and 
that  its  obligation  was  only  reaffirmed.  The  fourth 
command  begins:  ^'Remember  the  Sabbath  day  to 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  17 

keep  it  holy/'  It  is  not  accurate  to  call  on  people 
to  remember  what  they  had  never  heard  before. 
N^one  of  the  other  commands  begin  thus.  But 
others,  if  not  all,  of  them  were  old  commands, 
known  to  God's  people  before.  Yet  the  fourth 
alone  begins  with  the  call  to  remember.  This 
makes  the  language  more  expressive,  and  it  indi- 
cates plainly  this  thought :  that  in  the  fourth  com- 
mandment God  considered  himself  as  only  requiring 
the  same  duty  taught  to  Adam. 

It  is  argued,  further,  that  the  very  fact  that  this 
precept  has  its  place  in  the  awful  "  Ten  Words  "  is 
itself  evidence  enough  that  it  is  no  mere  positive 
and  ceremonial  command,  but  one  moral  and  per- 
petual. 

Confessedly,  there  is  nothing  else  ceremonial  here. 
An  eminent  distinction  was  given  to  these  ten  com- 
mands by  the  mode  in  which  God  delivered  them. 
They  were  given  first  of  all  the  laws  enacted  at 
Horeb.  They  were  spoken  in  the  hearing  of  all 
the  people  by  God's  own  voice  of  thunder,  which 
formed  its  tremendous  sounds  into  syllables  so  loud 
that  the  wliole  multitude  around  the  base  of  the 
mount  heard  them  break  articulate  from  the  cloud 
upon  its  peak.  "These  words  the  Lord  spake 
unto  all  your  assembly  in  the  mount,  out  of  the 
midst  of  the  fire,  the  cloud,  and  the  thick  darkness, 
with  a  great  voice ;  and  he  added  no  more  "  (Deut, 
5  :  22).  No  other  words  shared  the  same  distinc- 
tion. 

2 


18  TEE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

Then  they  were  engraved,  by  God^s  own  agency, 
on  two  stone  tables,  whose  durability  was  to  rep- 
resent the  perpetual  obligation  of  all  that  was  writ- 
ten upon  them.  How  can  it  be  believed  that  one 
r-eremonial  precept  was  thrust  in  here  where  all  else 
is  of  obligation  as  old  and  as  universal  and  as  last- 
ing as  the  race?  There  is  no  ceremonial  rule  on 
the  two  tables.  This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by 
another  .fact :  the  two  tables  were  made  "  tables  of 
the  testimony,"  and  for  holding  them  the  sacred  ark 
was  made,  called  the  "  ark  of  the  testimony,"  cov- 
ered with  the  mercy-seat  and  crowned  by  the  She- 
kinah,  the  bright  symbol  of  God's  presence.  This 
fact  showed  that  this  law  written  on  the  stones  was 
the  permanent  bond  of  God's  covenant  with  his 
Church — the  very  law  which  the  great,  divine 
High  Priest  came  to  honor,  and  whose  breaches 
are  covered  only  by  the  blood  of  Calvary. 

We  find,  again,  that  the  ground  assigned  in  the 
commandment  is  the  same  as  in  Genesis,  and  is  in 
no  sense  Jewish  or  local  or  temporary.  God's  work 
of  creation  in  six  days  and  his  rest  upon  the  sev- 
enth have  just  as  much  relation  to  one  tribe  of 
Adam's  descendants  as  to  another.  To  appreciate 
the  force  of  this  we  must  notice,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  when  ceremonial  commands  are  given  which 
are  peculiar  to  the  Jews,  such  as  the  passover,  a 
Jewish  event  is  assigned  as  its  ground,  as  the  de- 
liverance from  Egypt. 

The  early  traditions  of  the  pagans  are,  of  course, 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  19 

of  no  divine  authority  to  us,  yet  they  give  an  in- 
teresting support  to  the  lesson  taught  us  in  Genesis 
and  Exodus,  showing  that  even  these  idolaters  once 
knew  that  the  Sabhath  was  a  primeval  institution 
ordained  for  all  nations.  No  one  will  ima2:ine  that 
Homer  and  Hesiod,  for  instance,  borrowed  from  the 
Old  Testament  sabbatical  allusions  which  woidd 
have  been  unintelligible  to  their  pagan  readers. 
These  poets  evidently  refer  to  the  popular  tradi- 
tions which  these  Greek  descendants  of  Japheth 
carried  to  the  "  isles  of  Chittim."  A  few  of  the 
early  allusions  to  a  Sabbath  will  be  borrowed  from 
the  writings  of  Clement  of  Alexandria,  a  learned 
Christian  of  the  second  century,  inasmuch  as  he 
has  made  them  ready  to  our  hands.  He  remarks : 
"  That  the  seventh  day  is  sacred,  not  the  Hebrews 
only,  but  the  Gentiles  also,  acknowledge,  according 
to  which  the  whole  universe  of  living  and  vegeta- 
ble things  revolve.  Hesiod,  for  instance  (Dierum 
6),  says  of  it,  *  The  first  and  the  fourth  and  the  sev- 
enth also  is  a  sacred  day.'  And  again  he  exclaims : 
*  The  seventh  day  once  more,  the  splendid  dawn  of 
the  sun.'  And  Homer  sings,  ^The  seventh  then 
arrived,  the  sacred  day.'  Again,  ^  The  seventh  was 
sacred.'  Once  more,  ^The  seventh  dawn  was  at 
hand,  and  with  this  all  this  series  is  completed.' " 
Clement  also  quotes  the  poet  Callimachus  as  say- 
ing, "  It  was  now  the  sabbath  day,  and  with  this  all 
was  accomplished."  "The  seventh  day  is  among 
the  fortunate ;  yea,  the  seventh  is  the  parent  day.' 


20  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

"  The  seventh  day  is  the  first,  and  the  seventh  is 
the  complement."  "  This  day  the  elegies  of  Solon 
also  proclaim  as  more  sacred,  in  a  wonderful  mode." 
Thus  far  Clement,  Prceparatio  Evang. 

The  ancient  Jewish  historian  Josephus,  in  his 
last  book  against  Apion,  affirms  "that  there  could 
be  found  •  no  city,  either  of  the  Grecians  or  barba- 
rians, who  owned  not  a  seventh  day^s  rest  from 
labor."  The  learned  Jew  Philo  called  it  the  "  fes- 
tival of-  all  nations." 

The  most  emphatic  uninspired  testimony  is  also 
the  most  valuable  because  of  its  antiquity.  The 
late  Mr.  George  Smith,  famous  for  his  Assyrian 
researches,  says:  "In  the  year  1869,  I  discovered, 
among  other  things,  a  curious  religious  calendar 
of  the  Assyrians,  in  which  every  month  is  divided 
into  four  weeks,  and  the  seventh  days,  or  ^sabbaths,' 
are  marked  out  as  days  on  which  no  work  should 
be  undertaken"  [Assyrian  Discoveries,  p.  12).  H. 
Fox  Talbot,  in  his  translation  of  these  Creation- 
tablets,  renders  two  lines  thus: 

"  On  the  seventh  day  he  appointed  a  holy  day, 
And  to  cease  from  all  business  he  commanded." 

He  also  says :  "  This  fifth  tablet  is  very  important, 
because  it  affirms  clearly,  in  my  opinion,  that  the 
origin  of  the  Sabbath  was  coeval  with  the  crea- 
tion." So  the  Rev.  A.  H.  Sayce  [Trans,  Soc.  BibL 
Arch.,  vol.  v.,  Pt.  II.,  pp.  427,  428).  Mr.  Sayce 
has  translated  the  rules  for  each  day  of  the  month. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  21 

Those  for  the  seventh  day  (which  is  called  "sab- 
bath "  and  '^  day  of  completion'^)  forbid  the  prince 
on  that  day  to  eat  cooked  fruits  and  birds,  to  change 
his  garments,  to  legislate  or  appoint  officeholders,  to 
take  medicine;  and  requires  him  to  make  his  sacri- 
fice to  God  on  that  day. 

There  is  another  convincing  proof  tliat  the  Sab- 
bath never  was  a  merely  Levitical  institution  w^iich 
is  found  in  the  fact  that  in  the  very  law  of  the  Dec- 
alogue God  commands  its  observance  equally  by 
Jews  and  Gentiles :  "  In  it  thou  shalt  not  do  any 
work,  thou,  nor  thy  son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy  man- 
servant, nor  thy  maid-servant,  nor  thy  cattle,  nor 
thy  stranger  that  is  loithln  thy  gates.'^  This  stranger 
was  the  foreigner  residing  in  the  land  of  Israel. 
To  see  the  convincing  force  of  this  fact  the  reader 
must  contrast  the  jealous  care  with  which  the 
"  stranger,"  the  pagan  foreigner  sojourning  in  Jew- 
ry, was  excluded  from  all  share  in  the  Levitical 
worship.  No  foreigner  could  partake  of  the  pass- 
over  ;  it  was  sacrilege.  It  was  at  the  peril  of  his 
life  that  he  presumed  to  enter  the  inner  courtyard 
of  the  temple,  where  the  bloody  sacrifice  was  offer- 
"d.  Now,  when  this  foreigner  is  required  to  keep 
rhe  Sabbath  along  with  the  families  of  Israel,  does 
not  this  prove  that  rest  to  be  no  ceremonial,  no 
type  like  the  passover  and  the  altar,  but  a  univer- 
sal moral  institution  desio;ned  for  all  nations  and 
tfraes  ? 

Once  more :  That  the  Sabbath  of  the  Decalogue 


22  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

was  not  a  ceremonial  command  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  its  violation  was  made  a  capital  offence. 
(See  Ex.  31  :  14.)  No  ceremonial  command  was 
thus  enforced.  Even  circumcision,  fundamental  as 
it  was  to  the  whole  economy,  was  not  thus  fenced 
up.  Its  neglect  of  course  excluded  a  man  from 
the  Church,  but  it  incurred  no  capital  penalty. 

Care  has  been  taken  to  establish  this  assertion 
on  an  immovable  basis,  because  the  inference  from 
it  is  so  direct.  If  the  Sabbath  command  was  in 
full  force  before  Moses,  the  passing  away  of  Moses' 
law  did  not  revoke  it.  If  it  always  was  binding, 
on  grounds  as  general  as  the  human  race,  over  all 
tribes  of  mankind,  the  dissolution  of  God's  special 
covenant  with  the  family  of  Jacob  did  not  repeal 
it.  If  the  nature  of  the  Sabbath  is  moral  and 
practical,  then  the  substitution  of  the  substance  for 
the  types  did  not  supplant  it.  The  ceremonial  l-aws 
were  temporary,  because  the  need  for  them  was  tem- 
porary. They  were  removed  because  the  Church 
no  longer  required  them.  But  the  practical  need 
for  a  Sabbath  is  the  same  in  all  ages.  When  we 
are  made  to  see  that  the  sanctification  of  this  day  is 
the  bulwark  of  practical  religion  in  the  world ;  that 
it  goes  hand-in-hand  everywhere  with  piety  and  the 
true  knowledge  of  God;  that  where  there  is  no 
Sabbath  there  is  at  last  no  Christianity, — it  becomes 
incredible  to  us  that  God  w^ould  make  the  institu- 
tion temporary.  The  necessity  for  a  Sabbath  has 
not  ceased ;  therefore  the  command  has  not  been 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  23 

revoked.  It  is  a  perpetual  moral  command,  and 
moral  commands  are  as  incapable  of  repeal  as  the 
nature  of  God,  on  which  they  are  founded,  is  of 
change.  Hence  we  conclude  that  the  command, 
"Remember  the  Sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy," 
stands  just  as  binding  upon  us  now  as  any  other 
of  the  ten.  The  New-Testament  writers  and  our 
Lord  Jesus  always  speak  of  the  other  nine  com- 
mands, and  comment  upon  them,  as  permanent  and 
unalterable :  "  It  is  easier  for  heaven  and  earth  to 
pass  than  one  tittle  of  the  law  to  fail."  The  Sab- 
bath command  stands  as  one  among  the  precepts 
of  this  permanent  law,  resting  on  grounds  equally 
moral  and  universal. 

But  it  is  objected  that  the  seventh-day  Sabbath 
is  declared  to  have  been  to  the  Hebrews  a  peculiar 
institution,  and  even  a  sign  or  type,  having  the 
ground  of  its  injunctions  in  their  own  special  his- 
tory, and  enjoined  only  as  a  badge  of  their  own 
special  theocratic  covenant  with  God.  Thus,  in 
Deut.  5  :  15  the  deliverance  from  Egypt  is  men- 
tioned as  the  ground  of  the  command :  "And  re- 
member that  thou  wast  a  servant  in  the  land  of 
Egypt,  and  that  the  Lord  thy  God  brought  thee  out 
thence  through  a  mighty  hand  and  by  a  stretched- 
out  arm ;  therefore  the  Lord  thy  God  commanded 
thee  to  keep  the  Sabbath  day."  It  is  sought  to  push 
this  text  to  mean  that  to  the  rest  of  God's  people, 
who  did  not  share  the  exodus  from  Egypt,  there 
is  no  ground  for  observing  any  Sabbath. 


24  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

TJiat  this  is  utterly  foreign  from  Moses'  intent 
appears  thus:  The  exodus  from  Egypt  is  the  ex- 
press preface  to  the  first  command  (and  so  to  the 
whole  Decalogue),  both  here  in  Deut.  5  :  6  and  in 
Ex.  20  :  2.  This  notable  argument  would  prove, 
then,  were  it  worth  anything,  that  because  we  did 
not  share  the  exodus  from  Egypt  we  are  not  bound 
by  the  great  command  against  idolatry,  nor  indeed 
by  any  of  the  Decalogue !     It  is  worthless. 

Again :  In  Ex.  20  :  11  a  worldwide  and  perma- 
nent ground  for  the  Sabbath  command  is  assign- 
ed :  "  For  in  six  days  the  Lord  made  heaven  and 
earth,''  etc ,  while  nothing  is  said  about  the  exodus. 
The  explanation  is  clear.  The  Hebrews  had  all 
the  reasons  to  keep  the  Sabbath  which  the  whole 
human  race  has — God's  sanctifying  it  at  the  cre- 
ation of  the  race  and  commanding  it  to  all  the  race. 
But  they  had  this  additional  reason :  that  God  had 
now  blessed  them  above  all  other  tribes.  Hence 
they  were  bound  by  gratitude  also  to  keep  the  Sab- 
bath. 

Again:  It  is  objected  that  God  made  the  Sab- 
bath *^a  sign"  between  him  and  the  Hebrews  (Ex. 
31  :  13,  17;  Ezek.  20  :  12,  20).  The  attempt  is 
made  to  infer  hence  that  the  Sabbath  was  a  mere 
type  to  the  Hebrews,  and  thus  has  passed  away 
like  all  the  other  types,  since  the  antitype,  Christ, 
came.  Again  I  reply :  If  its  being  "  a  sign  "  be- 
tween God  and  Israel  proves  it  a  type,  then  the 
same  argument  proves  that  the  great  first  law  of 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  25 

love  itself  was  a  type,  and  has  been  abrogated ;  for 
in  Deut.  6  :  8,  Israel  is  commanded  to  make  this 
"a  sign."  Such  is  the  absurdity  of  this  argument. 
Moreover:  the  Decalogue  itself  is  called  again  and 
again  "the  testimony,"  and  the  very  chest  in  which 
the  two  tablets  of  stone,  written  with  the  command- 
ments, were  kept,  is  called  the  "  ark  of  the  testi- 
mony" (Ex.  25  :  16,  21;  31  :  18;  32  :  15;  34  : 
29 ;  Ps,  78  :  5).  If  the  reader  would  see  how  near 
this  word  "  testimony  "  is  to  the  other  word  "  sign," 
let  him  read  Josh.  22  :  26-34.  (The  word  is  the 
same  in  the  main. — Ed.)  Let  him  compare  also 
Ruth  4  :  7,  where  the  shoe  "  was  a  testimony  in 
Israel."  The  idea  of  the  "sign"  between  God 
and  Israel,  and  of  the  witness  between  them,  is 
there  nearly  the  same.  Hence  I  argue  again :  If 
the  Sabbath  being  "a  sign"  proves  it  a  mere 
type,  the  Ten  Commandments  being  a  "  testimony  " 
or  "  witness"  proves  themselves  a  mere  type. 

To  understand  this  "  sign "  we  must  remember 
that  all  the  world  except  the  Hebrews  had  gone 
off  into  idolatry,  neglecting  all  God's  laws  and  also 
the  proper  observance  of  his  Sabbatli.  The  cove- 
nant which  Israel  made  with  him  was,  to  be  sep- 
arate from  all  the  pagans  and  to  obey  his  law,  so 
neglected  by  them.  Now,  the  public  observance 
of  the  Sabbath  gave  the  most  obvious,  general,  vis- 
ible sign  to  the  world  and  the  Church  of  this  cove- 
nant, and  of  the  difference  between  God's  people 
and  pagans.     Hence  it  was  eminently  suitable  as  a 


26  THE  CHBISTIAN  SABBATH. 

sign  of  that  covenant.  The  human  race  is  still 
divided  between  the  world  and  the  Cliurch ;  and 
holy  Sabbath  observance  ought  to  be  precisely  such 
a  "  sign '^  of  the  Church's  relation  to  her  God  now. 
This  simple  view  relieves  the  whole  question.  The 
general  apostasy  of  the  nations  made  this  duty  of 
visible  Sabbath-keeping,  which  God  enjoins  on  all 
men  of  all  ages,  a  badge  and  mark  of  those  who 
still  fear  him. 

It  should  be  noted  also  that  the  phrase  "sab- 
baths," as  used  in  the  Pentateuch,  means  the  other 
Jewish  festivals  as  well  as  the  seventh  day.  Thus 
in  Lev.  25  :  2,  4  "  sabbath ''  means  the  sabbatical 
year.  In  Lev.  19  :  3,  30  it  probably  includes  all 
the  annual  festivals  of  religion.  In  Lev.  16  :  31 
it  means  the  great  day  of  atonement,  which,  com- 
ing on  the  tenth  day  of  the  seventh  month  each 
year,  might  be  any  other  day  as  well  as  the  seventh. 
In  Lev.  23  :  24  it  means  the  day  of  the  new  moon, 
which  might  be  on  any  day  of  the  week. 

Finally,  the  subsequent  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment teach  us  that  Sabbath  observance  was,  to  the 
believing  Hebrew,  a  spiritual  and  not  a  ceremonial 
duty.  The  ninety-second  Psalm  is  entitled,  by  in- 
spiration, "A  psalm  or  song  for  the  Sabbath  day." 
Every  sentiment  there  is  evangelical,  and  the  be- 
liever's chief  joy  in  the  day  is  in  the  foretaste  it 
gives  of  the  everlasting  rest. 

In  Isa.  56  :  4-8  we  have  the  following  words : 
"  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  unto  the  eunuchs  that 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  27 

keep  ray  Sabbaths  and  choose  the  things  that  please 
me,  and  take  hold  of  my  covenant;  even  unto  them 
will  I  give  in  mine  house,  and  within  my  walls,  a 
place  and  a  name  better  than  of  sons  and  of  daugh- 
ters: I  will  give  them  an  everlasting  name  that 
shall  not  be  cut  off.  Also  the  sons  of  the  stranger 
that  join  themselves  to  the  Lord,  to  serve  him,  and 
to  love  the  name  of  the  Lord,  to  be  his  servants, 
every  one  that  keepeth  the  Sabbath  from  polluting 
it,  and  taketh  hold  of  my  covenant;  even  them 
will  I  bring  to  my  holy  mountain,  and  make  them 
joyful  in  my  house  of  prayer :  their  burnt-offerings 
and  sacrifices  shall  be  accepted  upon  mine  altar:  for 
mine  house  shall  be  called  a  house  of  prayer  for  all 
people.  The  Lord  God  wdiich  gathereth  the  out- 
casts of  Israel  saith :  Yet  will  I  gather  others  to 
him,  beside  those  that  are  gathered  unto  him." 

Let  it  be  noted  that  here  Sabbath  observance  re- 
ceives a  blessing  for  Gentiles  as  well  as  Jews,  and 
that  this  blessing  is  associated  with  that  full  ingath- 
ering of  Gentile  believers  which  Avas  predicted  to 
attend  the  Messianic  dispensation,  when  Zion  should 
be  a  house  of  prayer  for  all  nations.  How  could 
words  more  strongly  indicate  that  the  Sabbath  be- 
longs to  both  dispensations  ? 

But  the  language  of  Isa.  58  :  13,  14  is  still 
stronger :  '^  If  thou  turn  away  thy  foot  from  the 
Sabbath,  from  doing  thy  pleasure  on  my  holy  day ; 
and  call  the  Sabbath  a  delight,  the  holy  of  the  Lord, 
honorable;  and  shalt  honor  him,  not  doing  thine 


28  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

own  ways,  nor  finding  thine  own  pleasure,  nor 
speaking  thine  own  words;  then  shalt  thou  delight 
thyself  in  the  Lord ;  and  I  will  cause  thee  to  ride 
upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth,  and  feed  thee  with 
the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  father :  for  the  mouth  of 
the  Lord  hath  spoken  it." 

Let  the  reader  observe  here  that  the  main  scope 
of  this  fifty-eighth  chapter  of  Isaiah  is  to  dissuade 
the  Jews  from  a  ceremonial  righteousness  by  show- 
ing its  worthlessness  when  unaccompanied  by  spirit- 
ual holiness.  They  are  ardently  urged  to  offer  God, 
instead  of  ritual  service,  the  duties  of  inward  right- 
eousness, and  especially  of  charity.  To  these  the 
blessing  is  promised.  Now,  it  is  in  this  connection 
that  the  prophet  also  urges  a  spiritual  Sabbath  ob- 
servance, and  to  it  he  repeats  the  same  promises. 
He  also  connects  this  right  kind  of  Sabbath  observ- 
ance immediately  with  the  glorious  Messianic  tri- 
umphs of  Zion,  which,  as  we  know  from  all  the 
subsequent  history,  occur  only  under  the  new  dis- 
pensation. Nowhere  does  Isaiah  better  deserve 
than  here  the  title  of  "  the  evangelical  prophet." 
It  is  simply  impossible  for  the  candid  reader  to 
take  in  the  anti-ceremonial  aim  of  the  whole  pas- 
sage, and  to  believe  that  Isaiah  here  thought  of 
Sabbath  observance  as  only  a  typical  duty.. 

II.  But  it  is  said  that  the  New  Testament  does 
repeal  the  obligation  of  the  Sabbath,  and  that  in 
the  face  of  this  new  teaching  of  Christ  and  his 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  29 

apostles  the  plainest  seeming  inferences  must  give 
way.  Let  us,  then,  in  the  second  place,  consider 
these  passages  carefully  and  candidly.  Let  us 
weigh  them  honestly,  listen  fairly  to  all  that  the 
learned  enemies  of  the  Sabbath  have  to  argue  from 
them,  and  grapple  manfully  with  their  real  teach- 
ings. We  will  refer  the  reader  to  every  verse  in  the 
New  Testament  which  has  been  supposed  to  bear  on 
the  question. 

The  first  we  notice  are  those  contained,  with  some 
slight  variations,  in  the  parallel  places  of  Matt.  12 : 
1-8  ;  Mark  2  :  23-28  ;  Luke  6  :  1-5.  Matthew's 
narrative  is,  on  the  whole,  the  fullest : 

"At  that  time  Jesus  went  on  the  Sabbath  day 
through  the  corn  [wheat  or  barley] ;  and  his  disci- 
ples were  an  hungered,  and  began  to  pluck  the  ears 
of  corn,  and  to  eat.  But  when  the  Pharisees  saw 
it,  they  said  unto  him.  Behold,  thy  disciples  do  that 
which  is  not  lawful  to  do  on  the  Sabbath  day.  But 
he  said  unto  them.  Have  ye  not  read  what  David 
did,  when  he  was  an  hungered,  and  they  that  were 
with  him ;  how  he  entered  into  the  house  of  God, 
and  did  eat  the  shew-bread,  which  was  not  lawful 
for  him  to  eat,  neither  for  them  which  were  with 
him,  but  only  for  the  priests?  Or  have  ye  not 
read  in  the  law,  how  that  on  the  Sabbath  days  the 
priests  in  the  temple  profane  the  Sabbath,  and  are 
blameless?  But  I  say  unto  you  that  in  this  place  is 
One  greater  than  the  temple.  But  if  ye  had  known 
what  this  meaneth,  I  will  have  mercy,  and  not  sac- 


30  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

rifice,  ye  would  not  have  condemned  the  guiltless. 
For  the  Son  of  man  is  Lord  even  of  the  Sabbath 
day." 

Now,  it  is  claimed  that  these  words  of  our  Sa- 
viour modify  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  repeal  the 
Sabbath  law  with  a  view  to  the  new  dispensation. 
The  attempt  is  made  to  sustain  this  by  pointing  to 
the  fact  that  Jesus  here  illustrates  his  point  by  re- 
ferring to  two  other  merely  ceremonial  or  positive 
instances;  by  which  they  think  he  intimates  that 
the  Sabbath  was  as  much  a  positive  ceremony  as  the 
shew-bread,  and  thus  as  reasonably  liable  to  repeal. 

The  reader,  upon  supplying  from  the  second  and 
third  evangelists  what  is  omitted  in  the  first,  will 
find  that  our  Lord  advances  five  distinct  ideas. 

His  hungry  disciples,  passing  along  the  footpath 
through  the  fields  of  ripe  grain,  had  availed  them- 
selves of  the  permission  of  Deut.  23  :  25  to  pluck, 
rub  out  and  eat  some  grains  of  wheat  or  barley  as 
a  slight  refreshment.  The  Pharisees,  eager  to  find 
fault,  caviled  that  Christ  had  thus  permitted  his 
followers  to  break  the  Sabbath  law  by  preparing 
food  in  sacred  time,  making  this  ado  about  the 
plucking,  rubbing  and  winnowing  of  a  few  heads 
of  grain  with  their  hands  as  they  walked.  In  de- 
fence of  them  and  himself  our  Saviour  says,  in  the 
first  place,  that  their  hunger  was  a  necessity  which 
justified  their  departure  from  the  letter  of  the  law 
in  this  case,  as  did  David's  necessity  when,  fleeing 
for  his  life,  he  innocently  used  the  shew-bread  to 


TUE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  31 

appease  his  hunger.  Second,  that  the  example  of 
the  priests,  who  performed  necessary  manual  labor 
about  the  temple  (such  as  skinning  and  dressing  the 
sacrifices,  cleaning  the  altar  and  such  like)  on  the 
Sabbath,  and  were  blameless,  justified  what  his  dis- 
ciples had  done.  Third,  that  God  prefers  compli- 
ance with  the  spirit  of  his  law,  calling  for  human- 
ity, love  and  mercy,  to  mere  observance  of  its  outer 
form.  For,  fourth,  God's  design  in  instituting  the 
Sabbath  had  been  a  humane  one,  seeing  he  designed 
it  not,  as  the  Pharisees  regarded  their  observances,  as 
a  galling  asceticism,  burdensome  to  the  worshiper 
and  ministering  only  to  his  self-righteousness,  but 
as  a  means  of  promoting  the  true  welfare  of  his 
servants.  And  lastly,  that  he  himself,  as  the  Mes- 
siah, was  the  supreme  and  present  authority  in 
maintaining  the  Sabbath  law,  as  well  as  all  others 
of  his  laws ;  so  that  it  was  enough  that  he  acquitted 
his  disciples  of  sin  ;  and  this  pretended  zeal  for  God 
in  the  presence  of  the  supreme  Lawgiver,  God  in- 
carnate, was  officious  and  impertinent.  Had  his 
disciples  really  committed  an  infraction  of  his  Sab- 
bath law,  he  could  have  seen  to  his  own  rights  and 
honor  without  the  Pharisees'  deceitful  help.  The 
consistency  of  this  simple  view  with  itself,  and  the 
perfectness  of  its  logic  in  rebuking  the  cavilers,  are 
a  sufficient  proof  of  its  faithfulness  to  the  Saviour's 
meaning. 

Now,   the   modern    opponents    of    our   doctrine 
would  have  us  believe  that  our  Saviour  here  exerts 


32  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

his  Messianic  authority  to  introduce,  for  the  first 
time,  the  freer  and  more  lenient  law  of  the  Sabbath 
for  the  new  dispensation,  and  to  repeal  the  Mosaic. 
It  will  appear  that  this  is  a  sheer  blunder,  a  bald 
misconception  of  the  whole  case ;  and  the  short  and 
simple  proof  is,  that  the  Sabbath,  as  it  ought  to  he 
observed  by  Jews  under  the  Mosaic  laics,  is  what  our 
Saviour  is  here  expounding.  The  new  dispensation 
had  not  yet  come,  and  was  not  to  begin  until  Pen- 
tecost. After  all  this  discussion  Jesus  Christ  scru- 
pulously observed  evefy  point  of  the  Mosaic  law 
up  to  his  death.  He  was  engaged  in  the  celebra- 
tion of  a  Mosaic  ordinance,  the  passover,  at  the  very 
hour  his  murderers  were  arranging  for  his  destruc- 
tion ;  it  was  the  last  free  act  of  his  life.  The  whole 
Scriptures  concur  in  teaching  us  that  the  change  of 
dispensation  resulted  only  from  his  death  and  resur- 
rection. Until  those  acts  were  completed  the  types 
were  unfulfilled,  and  the  grounds  of  the  old  dispen- 
sation all  remained.  At  the  time  of  this  discussion 
Christ  was  living  as  a  member  of  the  Jewish  Church, 
for  our  sakes  "fulfilling  all  its  righteousness."  If, 
then,  anything  were  here  relaxed,  it  would  be  the 
Mosaic  Sabbath,  as  Jews  should  keep  it,  which  is 
the  subject  of  alteration.  But  there  is  no  repeal  of 
anything;  only  an  explanation.  To  represent  the 
passage  as  a  change  of  an  Old-Testament  law  for 
Old-Testament  members  would  not  help  the  cause 
of  our  opponents  a  particle;  and,  moreover,  it  is  a 
thing  which  could  not  happen,  as  the  Old-Testa- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  33 

ment  laws  were  all  perfectly  permanent  until  the 
time  came  for  the  change  of  dispensation. 

The  careful  reader  will  see  that  our  Saviour  does 
not  plead  for  any  relaxation  of  the  Sabbath  law  in 
favor  of  his  disciples ;  he  only  asks  a  correct  expo- 
sition. The  whole  drift  of  his  argument  is  to  prove 
that  when  it  is  correctly  understood  how  God  in- 
tended Jews  to  keep  his  Sabbath  law,  it  will  appear 
that  his  disciples  have  not,  by  this  act,  broken  it  at 
all.  They  need  no  lowering  of  its  claims  in  order 
to  escape  condemnation. 

Bearing  this  important  fact  in  mind,  let  us  pro- 
ceed to  the  second  erroneous  inference.  This  is, 
that  our  Saviour,  by  illustrating  the  Sabbath  law 
from  two  ceremonial  instances,  intimates  that  the 
Sabbath  also  was  but  a  Jewish  ceremony.  But 
when  one  observes  how  the  Jewish  Scriptures  com- 
mingle what  we  call  ''  moral  "  and  "  positive ''  pre- 
cepts, and  how  uniformly  the  Hebrew  mind  seems 
to  ignore  the  distinction,  this  inference  will  be  seen 
to  be  utterly  worthless.  The  Jew,  in  his  practical 
views  of  duty,  never  paused  to  separate  the  two 
classes  of  precepts.  Thus,  Moses  in  Exodus  con- 
nects solemn  prohibitions  against  idolatry  with  in- 
junctions not  to  hew  the  stones  for  an  altar,  against 
eating  flesh  torn  of  beasts  in  the  field  and  bearing 
false  witness.  Ezekiel  (ch.  18)  conjoins  eating  upon 
the  mountains  and  taking  interest  upon  a  loan  with 
idolatry  and  oppression,  in  his  charges  again.st  the 
Jews  of  his  day.     Yea,  we  see  the  apostles  them- 


34  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

selves  (Acts  15)  warning  the  Gentile  believers  in 
the  same  breath  against  fornication  and  eating  a 
strangled  fowl.  We  do  not  argue  from  these  facts 
against  the  existence  of  our  distinction  of  "moral" 
from  "positive;"  we  only  show  how  utterly  unwar- 
rantable it  is  to  argue  that  both  of  two  precepts 
must  be  positive  only  because  the  sacred  waiters 
connect  the  one  with  another  which  is  such. 

It  is  inferred  again,  from  Christ's  third  remark, 
that  the  Sabbath  command  must  be  ceremonial,  be- 
cause he  teaches  that  the  obligation  for  its  observ- 
ance should  give  place  to  that  of  mercy.  This,  they 
suppose,  must  be  on  the  principle  that  positive  or 
ceremonial  commands  give  place  to  those  which 
are  moral  and  perpetual.  One  reply  is,  that  so  do 
moral  duties  of  a  lower  grade  give  place  to  those 
of  a  higher  in  some  cases.  Thus,  there  is  a  nat- 
ural, moral  and  perpetual  obligation  to  w^orship 
God,  yet  any  and  every  form  of  God's  worship 
would  be  righteously  suspended  for  a  time  to  save 
a  man  perishing  in  the  water.  This  duty  of  hu- 
manity would  take  precedence  of  the  other  duty 
of  religious  worship  for  the  time,  because  of  its 
greater  urgency;  an  hour  later  God  might  still 
be  worshiped  acceptably,  but  the  man  ^vould  be 
drowned.  Pro  v.  21  :  3  expresses  precisely  this 
truth  in  these  w^ords:  "To  do  justice  and  judgment 
is  more  acceptable  to  the  Lord  than  sacrifice." 
Both  in  this  place,  and  in  our  Saviour's  citation 
from  the  prophet  Samuel  (whose  words  he  quotes), 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  35 

"sacrifice"  stands  for  religious  worship  in  general. 
This,  surely,  is  not  a  duty  merely  ceremonial  and 
positive,  yet  it  is  righteously  postponed  to  mercy. 
Then,  our  Saviour's  ))ostponing  a  given  point  of 
Sabbath  observance  to  mercy  does  not  prove  that 
this  is  merely  ceremonial  and  positive. 

A  second  answer  is,  that  circumstances  may  greatly 
modify  the  details  of  duties  of  the  most  permanent 
character.  Does  any  one  dispute  that  the  obliga- 
tion to  'Mionor  his  parents''  is  a  moral  and  perma- 
nent one  of  very  high  order?  If  parents  are  aged 
and  dependent,  this  honor  doubtless  includes  main- 
tenance. Thus,  it  might  be  a  most  urgent  and  bind- 
ing duty  of  a  son  in  England  to  furnish  his  aged  pa- 
rents with  fuel,  while  no  such  obligation  would  rest 
on  the  son  of  such  parents  in  India,  because  in  that 
warm  climate  nobody  needs  or  uses  fires  in  the  sit- 
ting-rooms. How  simple  is  this!  Then  it  is  equal- 
ly plain  that  no  one  is  entitled  to  infer  that  the  Sab- 
bath command  is  only  ceremonial  because  circum- 
stances alter  the  times  and  details  of  observance. 

But  the  force  of  the  inference  is  entirely  destroyed 
by  the  fact  that  it  was  not  a  failure  of  Sabbath  ob- 
servance which  Christ  was  excusing.  He  declares 
that  there  had  been  no  delinquency.  The  accused 
disciples  were  "guiltless."  He  explains  their  act 
as  an  incidental  labor  of  necessity,  strictly  consist- 
ent with  pro})er  Sabbath  observance.  There  was 
no  overriding  of  one  obligation  by  another  more 
imperious  to  be  explained. 


C6  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

The  perverted  gloss  of  the  fourth  point,  "The 
Sabbath  was  made  for  man,"  is  almost  too  shallow 
to  need  exposure.  These  writers  seem  to  think 
that  our  Saviour  meant  that  God  did  not  design  to 
cramp  any  man  by  the  Sabbath  law,  but  to  allow 
it  to  yield  in  every  way  to  the  creature's  conveni- 
ence and  gratification..  But  what  Christ  here  says 
is  that  the  design  of  the  Sabbath  is  a  humane  one — 
that  is,  man's  true  welfare.  Then  it  must  be  settled 
what  that  true  welfare  is,  and  how  it  may  be  best 
promoted,  before  we  may  conclude  that  God  allows 
us  to  do  what  we  please  with  his  holy  day.  If  it 
turns  out  that  man's  true  welfare  imperatively  de- 
mands a  Sabbath  day,  fenced  with  divine  authority 
and  faithfully  observed,  then  the  humanity  of  God's 
motive  in  appointing  it  will  argue  anything  else  than 
this  license  inferred  from  it.  It  may  be  added  that 
a  moment's  thought  of  the  Pharisees'  religious  system 
will  show  us  what  ideas  our  Saviour  was  exploding 
by  the  statement  that  "  the  Sabbath  was  made  for 
man."  The  religion  of  that  austere  and  proud  sect 
was  intensely  self-righteous  and  formal,  and,  to  a 
(crtain  degree,  ascetic.  It  was  a  religion  not  of 
love  and  holiness,  but  of  fear  and  slavish  forms. 
Their  idea  of  a  religious  observance  was  not  that 
of  a  blessed  means  of  grace,  but  of  an  ascetic  bur- 
den, by  bearing  which  a  man  might  imagine  he 
was  making  merit,  and  that  a  merit  proportioned 
to  the  irksomeness  and  difficulty  of  the  form  he 
forced   himself  to  go  through  with.     Now,  such 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  37 

people  as  these  would  very  naturally  think  that  the 
more  burdensome  they  made  their  Sabbaths  to  them- 
selves by  heaping  on  particulars  of  man's  invention, 
the  more  merit  they  would  get.  Hence  they  blamed 
the  disciples  for  their  little  act  of  labor.  Our  Sa- 
viour evidently  designs  by  these  words  to  teach 
them  that  they  wholly  misunderstood  the  purpose 
of  the  Mosaic  Sabbath.  God  did  not  require  the 
Hebrews  (nor  any  one  else)  to  keep  it  as  a  means  of 
ascetic  self-punishment,  like  the  papist's  hair  shirt ; 
but  he  required  them  to  keep  it  intelligently  and 
from  the  heart,  as  an  appointed  and  blessed  means 
of  grace.  The  pangs  of  hunger  may  be  a  very  fit 
self-punishment  if  the  purpose  is  that  of  the  self- 
righteous  monk,  to  make  a  fancied  merit  by  tortur- 
ing himself  for  nothing.  But  as  there  is  no  true 
religion  in  bodily  hunger,  and  as  it  ordinarily  in- 
terferes with  Bible-study  and  devotion,  of  course 
God's  idea  in  giving  the  Hebrews  a  Sabbath  to 
sanctify  implied  that  a  proper  part  of  that  sancti- 
fication  was  for  them  to  eat  when  they  really  needed 
to  eat. 

But  we  turn  our  Saviour's  declaration,  that  "  the 
Sabbath  was  made /or  man/^  directly  against  its  ad- 
versaries. The  word  "  man "  is  used  in  its  generic 
sense — the  race.  Here,  then,  we  are  divinely  taught 
that  the  Sabbath  was  made  not  for  the  Jews,  but  for 
the  race,  which  is  precisely  our  doctrine. 

The  concluding  words  of  our  Saviour  in  Matthew 
have  suggested  an  argument  which  is  a  little  more 


t8  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

plausible.  We  even  find  one  of  the  great  Keform- 
ers  para])hrasing  those  words  thus :  *'  The  Son  of 
man,  agreeably  to  his  authority,  is  able  to  relax  the 
Sabbath  day  just  as  the  other  legal  ceremonies." 
And  again :  "  Here  he  saith  that  power  is  given  to 
him  to  release  his  people  from  the  necessity  of  ob- 
serving the  Sabbath."  The  inference  he  would 
draw  is,  that  then  the  Sabbath  must  be  a  ceremo- 
nial institution,  for  we  have  ourselves  argued  that 
moral  and  permanent  laws  are  founded  on  the 
unchangeable  nature  of  God,  and  will  never  be 
changed,  because  he  cannot  change.  But  we  deny 
the  exposition.  It  gives  an  utterly  mistaken  and 
perverted  view  of  our  Saviour's  real  meaning.  Our 
Saviour's  own  words  are:  ^^ For-  the  Son  of  man  is 
Lord  even  of  the  Sabbath.^^  Now,  the  conjunction 
^'for^^  was  undoubtedly  our  Lord's  own  word, 
and  he  makes  it  emphatic.  But  these  expositors 
strangely  and  criminally  neglect  its  force  altogether. 
We  see  how  an  erroneous  notion  of  the  meaning 
blinded  them.  All  careful  students  of  tlie  Bible 
know  that  this  conjunction  "for"  is  usually  placed 
by  a  sacred  writer  to  introduce  the  words  which 
state  the  ground  or  reason  of  that  which  he  had 
just  asserted :  "  Watch,  therefore,  for  ye  know 
neither  the  day  nor  the  hour  when  the  Son  of  man 
cometh."  The  fact  that  we  do  not  know  the  day  is 
given  as  the  reason  lohy  we  are  told  to  w^atch.  It 
is  always  safest  criticism  to  give  a  w:ord  its  usual 
force  if  the  sense  of  the  passage  will  bear  it.     Let 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  39 

us  do  so  here.  Then  the  meaning  is,  that  the  Mes- 
siah's being  Lord  of  the  Sabbath  day  is  the  reason 
why  these  disciples  are  innocent. 

The  Saviour's  reasoning  is  in  substance  this : 
^' These  men,  blamed  by  you  Pharisees,  are  inno- 
cent. I  saw  them  pluck  and  eat  the  grain.  It  is 
enough  that  I  did  not  forbid  them,  for  I  am  the 
Lord  of  this  Sabbath  day.  This  law  is  my  law. 
I  was  the  person  who  published  it  from  the  top  of 
Mount  Sinai  (as  the  divine  Angel  of  the  covenant). 
It  is  my  authority  which  sustains  it.  Hence,  if  I 
am  satisfied  with  this  act  of  these  men,  that  is  proof 
enough  of  their  innocence.'' 

Such  reasoning  is  clear;  and  it  is  conclusive  and 
unanswerable,  as  the  arguments  of  the  Saviour  al- 
ways are  when  properly  understood.  Does  not  this 
show  that  we  explain  him  aright? 

But  if  the  reader  will  attend  we  will  show  that 
the  sense  placed  on  our  Saviour's  words  by  these  ex- 
])Ositors  cannot  be  right.  They  make  him  contradict 
himself.  He  says,  first,  that  the  disci})les  were  inno- 
cent, that  they  needed  no  excuse;  and  then  they 
make  him  say  that  "he  will  excuse  them  by  alter- 
ing the  law  in  their  favor,  as  he  has  a  right  to  do." 
The  one  ground  contradicts  the  other.  This  exjila- 
nation  would  represent  the  Saviour  as  stukifying 
himself  by  his  own  words,  as  we  sometimes  hear 
foolish  and  false  children  and  servants  do,  when, 
being  charged  with  an  oifence,  they  first  deny  it 
and  then  make  an  excuse  for   it.      Were  such  an 


40  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

explanation  willfully  urged  for  Christ's  words,  it 
would   be  profane. 

Another  proof  that  they  do  not  represent  Christ's 
words  aright  is  in  the  fact  that  Christ  did  not  at  that 
time  use  his  Messianic  authority  to  rej^eal  any  Mo- 
saic institution  whatever.  The  repeal  never  began 
until  after  his  resurrection.  It  is  well  known  that, 
on  the  contrary,  he  taught  his  followers  to  give  an 
exemplary  compliance  with  the  Levitical  laws  in 
every  respect  until  he  had  '^  caused  the  sacrifice  and 
oblation  to  cease"  by  "bringing  in  everlasting  right- 
eousness." 

Every  gloss  which  has  any  bearing  against  the 
morality  and  perpetuity  of  the  Sabbath  command 
has  been  thus  removed  from  these  passages  in  the 
Gospels.  The  statement  of  our  Saviour's  argument 
which  we  gave  at  the  beginning  of  the  explanation 
is  seen  to  be  consistent  and  scriptural.  This  is  one 
of  the  best  tests  of  its  truth.  But  the  reader  is  en- 
treated to  remember  that,  let  the  explanation  of  our 
Saviour's  reasons  be  what  it  may,  we  are  bound  to 
hold  that  it  was  the  true  nature  of  the  Mosaic  Sab- 
bath which  he  was  unfolding.  It  was  the  Sabbath 
as  binding  on  Jews  under  the  old  dispensation  which 
he  was  explaining.  So  that,  let  them  prove  what 
they  may,  they  have  proved  nothing  whatever  as 
to  the  manner  in  which  Christians  under  the  new 
dispensation  are  required  to  keep  the  Sabbath, 
whether  more  strictly  or  more  loosely.  If  they 
succeed  by  their  erroneous  criticism  in  persuading 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH,  41 

themselves  tliat  Christ  here  relaxed  the  Sabbath  law. 


the  only  consequence  is  the  unfortunate  one  of  mak- 
ing Christ  appear  to  contradict  his  own  inspired 
prophets. 

This  may  be  a  convenient  place  to  notice  a  sup' 
posed  difficulty  attending  our  argument.  It  is  said, 
"  If  you  deny  that  Christ  gives  any  relaxation  of 
the  stringency  of  the  Levitical  Sabbath  as  of  a  cer- 
emonial yoke,  then  in  consistency  you  must  exact 
of  Christians  now  as  punctilious  an  observance  in 
every  respect  as  was  required  of  the  Jews.  You 
must  allow  people  to  make  no  fire-  in  their  dwell- 
ings on  the  Sabbath.  You  will  seek  to  re-enact 
the  terrible  law  of  Num.  16,  which  punished  a 
wretch  with  death  for  gathering  a  few  sticks  on 
the  Sabbath  day.'' 

This  is  only  skillful  sophistry.  No  one  has  as- 
serted that  all  the  details  of  the  Sabbath  law  in  all 
the  books  of  Moses  are  of  perpetual  authority.  It 
has  not  been  denied  that  at  the  epoch  of  Sinai  the 
Sabbath,  a  holy  day  for  all  mankind  already,  be- 
came in  addition  a  sign  and  a  day  of  typical  wor- 
ship to  the  "  peculiar  people."  The  two  instances 
mentioned  are  the  only  plausible  ones  which  can  be 
advanced  against  us;  and  it  must  be  noticed  that 
they  are  not  taken  from  the  Decalogue,  hut  from 
subsequent  revelations  lohich  contain  many  ceremo- 
nials and  peculiar  political  rules  suited  to  Hebrews 
only.  No  one  argues,  for  instance,  as  to  the  second 
commandment — which  all  admit  to  be  of  perpetual 


42  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

and  moral  authority — that  it  perpetuates  all  the  rites 
of  the  altar  for  ever.  The  Westminster  Catechism 
declares  tliat  the  purpose  of  the  second  command- 
ment is  to  require  the  "  keeping  pure  and  entire 
all  such  religious  worship  and  ordinances  as  God 
hath  appointed  in  his  word."  After  the  twentieth 
chapter  of  Exodus  there  follow  in  the  same  book 
many  ordinances  enjoining  bloody  sacrifices,  in- 
cense and  shew-bread.  No  one  has  been  so  heed- 
less as  to  think  these  ritual  details  were  intended 
by  God  to  be  explicative  of  the  perpetual  obligation 
of  "keeping  pure  and  entire"  his  appointed  divine 
worship.  Why  should  they  commit  the  similar 
folly  in  the  fourth  commandment?  We  repeat: 
The  moral  and  perpetual  obligation  is  what  was 
spoken  by  the  Messiah^s  own  voice  from  the  top 
of  Sinai  in  the  "  Ten  Words,"  and  what  was  carved 
by  his  own  fingers  on  the  imperishable  stone.  What 
follows  in  the  Levitical  books  may  be  only  explica- 
tive of  ritual  details  appropriate  to  the  Jews,  like 
the  incense  and  shew-bread.  Whether  a  given  de- 
tail is  such,  or  is  explicative  of  the  permanent  part 
of  the  obligation,  this  must  be  found  out,  not  by 
rashly  "jumping  to  a  conclusion,"  but  by  the 
careful  and  faithful  comparison  of  scripture  with 
scripture. 

Now,  in  the  Sabbath  command  that  which  is  of 
perpetual  moral  obligation  is  what  is  founded  on 
the  rights  of  God  and  the  nature  of  man ;  and  this 
is  the  true  sanctification  to  his  public  and  private 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  43 

worship  of  such  stated  times  as  he  claims.  This 
he  tells  us  is  one  day  out  of  seven.  Other  details 
that  follow  may  or  may  not  be  ritual. 

There  are  several  scriptural  facts  which  give  us  a 
safe  guidance  as  to  these  details. 

First.  The  Sabbath  became  to  the  Jew  at  the  Mo- 
saic epoch  not  only  what  it  had  always  been  to  all 
men — a  sacred  day  of  worship — but  a  sign  and  a  day 
of  sacrifices.  It  ranked  with  his  new-moon  days. 
This  must  attach  to  its  observance,  for  a  Jew,  fea- 
tures of  exactness  and  mechanical  regularity  above 
what  its  moral  observance  required. 

Next.  The  government  was  a  theocracy;  no  line 
whatever  separated  the  secular  and  sacred  statutes. 
The  God  who  was  the  religious  object  of  the  He- 
brews' worship  was  also  the  political  king  of  the 
commonwealth.  He  was  setting  up  a  very  strict 
ritual  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  rigid  separation 
between  the  Hebrews  and  the  pagans  around  them. 
Hence,  willful  breaches  of  ordinances  bore  the  char- 
acter of  treason  against  the  divine  King  of  the  na- 
tion, and  might  be  naturally  and  properly  punished 
as  capital  crimes.  Idolatry  and  persuading  another 
to  idolatry  were  capital  crimes  in  the  theocracy,  and 
properly  so.  But  it  would  not  be  proper  for  the 
State  of  California  to  punish  the  Chinese  there  for 
their  idolatry  with  death,  because  that  State  is  not 
a  theocracy,  and  Church  and  State  are  properly 
separate.  So,  the  State  of  Virginia  ought  not  to 
punish  Sabbath-breaking  in   its   worst  form   with 


44  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

death.  Of  course,  it  will  not  punish  capitally  the 
gathering  of  sticks  to  make  a  fire  on  the  Sabbath. 
The  Christian  Church  has  no  power  of  corporal 
punishment  for  any  crime. 

Tliird.  Hebrew  houses  had  no  hearths  or  chim- 
neys except  for  cooking,  because  in  that  mild  cli- 
mate the  people  made  no  use  of  fire  in  their  sitting- 
rooms.  Hence  the  injunction  to  make  no  fire  in 
their  dwellings  on  the  Sabbath  day  amounted  pre- 
cisely to  an  injunction  not  to  cook  food  on  that  day. 
There  is  a  wide  and  necessary  diiference  in  the  spe- 
cies of  food  on  which  civilized  man  subsists  in  our 
latitude  and  the  national  food  of  ancient  Israel. 
This,  with  the  necessary  use  of  fuel  in  winter 
among  us,  may  make  some  slight  diiference  of  de- 
tail in  the  application  of  the  Jewish  rule  against 
cooking  food  on  the  Sabbath,  especially  for  the  sick 
and  infirm.  But  as  to  the  spirit  of  the  prohibition, 
it  ought  undoubtedly  to  be  held  among  us,  as  among 
the  Jews,  that  with  these  exceptions  no  culinary 
labors  should  have  place  on  the  Sabbath.  To  allow 
ourselves  further  license  in  this  is  to  palter  with  the 
essential  substance  of  the  perpetual  command — the 
sanctification  of  one  whole  day  out  of  seven  from  all 
secular  labors,  except  those  of  necessity  and  mercy, 
to  God's  religious  service.  These  culinary  labors, 
as  pursued  in  so  many  families  in  America  and 
Britain  even,  are  a  robbery  of  servants,  depriving 
them  of  their  Sabbath,  and  a  transgression  of  God's 
will,  for  the  mere  indulgence  of  luxury  in  eating. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  45 

This  sin  doubtless  cries  to  God  fearfully,  even  from 
these  Protestant  lands. 

The  only  other  places  in  the  New  Testament 
which  can  be  used  against  our  theory  of  Sabbath 
obligation  are  from  the  Epistles.  They  also  form  a 
group,  and  may  be  viewed  together. 

Rom.  14  :  5,  6:  "One  man  esteemeth  one  day 
above  another:  another  esteemeth  every  day  alike. 
Let  every  man  be  fully  persuaded  in  his  own  mind. 
He  that  regardeth  the  day  regardeth  it  unto  the 
Lord ;  and  he  that  regardeth  not  the  day,  to  the 
Lord  he  doth  not  regard  it.  He  that  eateth,  eateth 
to  the  Lord,  for  he  giveth  God  thanks;  and  he  that 
eateth  not,  to  the  Lord  he  eateth  not,  and  giveth 
God  thanks."  Gal.  4  :  9-11 :  "  But  now,  after  that 
ye  have  known  God,  or  rather  are  known  of  God, 
how  turn  ye  again  to  the  weak  and  beggarly  ele- 
ments, whereunto  ye  desire  again  to  be  in  bondage? 
Ye  observe  days,  and  months,  and  times,  and  years. 
I  am  afraid  of  you,  lest  I  have  bestowed  on  you 
labor  in  vain."  Col.  2  :  16,  17 :  "Let  no  man  there- 
fore judge  you  in  meat,  or  in  drink,  or  in  respect  of 
a  holy  day,  or  of  the  new  moon,  or  of  the  Sab- 
bath days :  which  are  a  shadow  of  things  to  come ; 
but  the  body  is  of  Christ." 

Tliose  who  oppose  the  divine  obligation  of  the 
Christian  Sabbath  make  the  following  use  of  these 
passages  :  They  say  that  they  find  in  them  the  same 
two  arguments  seen  in  the  passages  from  the  evan- 
gelists: first,  that  the  apostle  calls  the  Sabbath  a 


46  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

shadow  or  type,  and  Ave  know  that  the  types  are 
abolished ;  second,  that  the  apostle  here  discusses 
Sabbath  observance  on  the  same  footing  with  the 
distinctions  of  clean  and  unclean  meats,  which  shows 
that  he  thought  of  the  Sabbath  only  as  a  positive 
and  ceremonial    command.     They  also  claim  that 
the  apostle  here,  by  his  inspired  authority,  abol- 
ishes all  distinctions  of  days  whatsoever  from  that 
time  onward,  and  absolutely  makes  all  days  alike 
for  Christians.     Their  account  of  this  amazing  rev- 
olution is  the  following  :  The  old  dispensation,  they 
say,  was  dark,  unspiritual,  slavish,  adapted  to  the 
Church  in  its    infancy,  and    hence  burdened  with 
many  grievous  rites  which  were  in  themselves  of 
no  real  spiritual  use  to  souls ;  but  they  served  to 
keep  the  stupid  and  childish  minds  of  the  Old-Tes- 
tament worshipers  reminded  of  the  curse  of  a  broken 
law  under  which  they  lay,  and  anxious  for  the  gos- 
pel deliverance.     When  that  deliverance  came,  say 
they,  all  these  burdensome  shadows  were  lifted  oif ; 
they  had  fulfilled  their  purpose;  and  among  them 
was  removed  all  obligation  to  keep  any  one  day  as 
more  sacred  than  another  day.     This,  say  they,  fol- 
lows from  the  truth  that  gospel  love  and  gratitude 
in  a  pardoned  and  sanctified  believer's  heart  conse- 
crates every  day.     He  "does  all  for  the  glory  of 
God."     His   ploughing  and  building  and  buying 
and  selling  are  all  done  in  a  devout  spirit;  they  are 
all  a  worship  of  God.     Every  day  is  to  him  virtu- 
ally a  Sabbath  day,  and  thus  there  is  no  room  for 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  47 

a  distinction  of  days  under  the  new  dispensation. 
Hence  they  charge  that  he  who  transfers  the  di- 
vine obligation  of  the  seventh  day  to  the  first,  and 
regards  the  Lord's  day  as  a  divine,  Christian  Sab- 
bath, is  but  judaizing.  He  is  still  in  bondage;  he 
has  not  come  out  into  the  liberty  and  love  of  the 
gospel,  and  he  does  not  even  understand  it. 

But  we  ask  them  whether  the  apostle  in  these 
very  passages  (Rom.  14  :  f),  6)  does  not  allow  the 
keeping  of  days,  and  admit  that  he  that  does  it 
"  keepelh  them  to  the  Lord"?  And  do  not  these 
very  divines  hold  that  the  Church  does  right  to 
make  the  Lord's  day  a  day  of  leisure  and  of  public 
worship?  And  do  they  not  also  keep  Easter  and 
Whitsuntide,  two  days  of  mere  human  appoint- 
ment? They  have  an  answer  ready.  They  say. 
Yes ;  the  leisure  is  a  benefit  and  respite  to  domes- 
tic servants  and  work-animals.  Some  day  must  ])e 
agreed  on  by  human  ecclesiastical  authority  for  con- 
certed public  worship.  And,  chiefly,  the  apostle 
sets  them  the  example  of  allowing  a  distinction  of 
days  to  weaker  Christians  who  have  not  attained  to 
that  higher  experience  which  can  make  every  day  a 
Sabbath,  which  is  the  proper  standard  of  the  new 
dispensation.  The  apostle  remarks  that  while  some 
Christians — those,  namely,  of  higher  attainments — 
"  regard  every  day  alike,"  others — the  weaker  and 
foolisher — ^^e.^teom  one  day  above  another."  The 
wiser  must  make  allowances  for  the  weaker,  and 
permit,  or  even  encourage,  them  to  employ  these 


48  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

Jewish  crutches  for  their  weakness  until  they  can 
get  upon  better  grounds  of  religious  experience. 

Such  is  the  view  of  the  three  passages  taken  by 
this  class  of  writers. 

The  first  remark  we  make  upon  it  is  that,  whether 
we  can  advance  a  better  one  or  not,  theirs  cannot 
stand.  For,  first,  it  undertakes  expressly  to  repeal 
one  command  and  expunge  it  from  the  Decalogue. 
It  arrays  Paul  against  Christ.  Christ  put  that  com- 
mand in  the  ^'Ten  Words,"  which  contained  nothing 
but  the  perpetual  moral  law ;  he  carved  them  in 
stone,  a  symbol  of  their  perpetuity;  they  came 
from  the  immediate  mouth  of  God,  who  "spake  no 
more,"  spake  no  mere  ceremonial  matter  in  this 
way ;  he  imposed  this  command  on  foreigners,  who 
were  neither  required  nor  permitted  to  observe  the 
ceremonial  commands  while  Gentiles.  But  this 
scheme  represents  Paul  as  putting  the  Sabbath 
command  among  mere  ceremonials.  Now,  it  is  not 
to  be  believed  that  two  inspired  by  the  same  God 
contradicted  each  other,  or  that  a  part  of  that  law 
has  been  abolished  of  which  our  Saviour  declared, 
"  Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  before  one  jot  or  tittle 
of  it  shall  fail." 

Second.  The  reason  assigned  by  these  writers  for 
thinking  the  Sabbath  of  dKnne  appointment  unsuit- 
able for  the  gospel  dispensation  is  foolish.  God 
thought  that  a  Sabbath  day  suited  our  holy  first 
parents  in  Paradise.  Is  the  Christian  experience 
of  any  poor,  fallen  sinner  who  has  become  a  gospel 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  49 

believer  higher  and  purer  than  that  of  Adam  while 
he  was  ^'in  the  image  and  likeness  of  God"?  Do 
any  of  these  more  thoroughly  consecrate  their  com- 
mon labor,  and  make  every  working  day  a  Sabbath 
day  more,  than  Adam  did  ?  Yet  God  thought  Adam 
needed  a  literal  Sabbath,  one  day  in  seven.  Or  we 
might  show  the  foolishness  of  this  view  by  compar- 
ing ourselves  with  Old-Testament  saints.  Was  the 
Psalmist,  who  wrote  the  one  hundred  and  sixteenth 
Psalm — was  holy  Isaiah,  such  a  stranger  to  grace,  to 
gratitude,  to  gospel  self-dedication,  that  he  did  not 
know  how  to  consecrate  his  whole  life  to  his  Sa- 
viour ?  Surely  no  sinner  saved  by  grace  under  the 
gospel  ever  had  a  soul  more  baptized  with  these 
blessed  affections  than  David  and  Isaiah.  In  fact, 
when  a  believer  now  desires  to  pour  out  his  love  and 
gratitude  to  his  God,  he  usually  borrows  the  hymns 
of  Old-Testament  devotion  in  ^vhich  to  do  it.  Yet 
nobody  disputes  that  God  required  David  and  Isaiah 
to  keep  a  Sabbath  day. 

The  truth  is,  that  this  feeble  notion  had  its  origin 
among  a  school  of  half-reformed  divines  who  were 
heretical  as  to  the  gospel  character  of  the  old  dis- 
pensation, and  who  even  held  that  believers  under 
it  had  no  certain  gospel  light  or  hope,  and  that  the 
dispensation  was  not  a  spiritual  one  at  all.  We 
cannot  thus  contradict  both  Testaments ;  and  to  us, 
therefore,  this  dream  that  a  regular  holy  day  is  un- 
suited  to  the  more  spiritual  and  thankful  experience 
of  the  new  dispensation  can  only  be  absurd. 

4 


50  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

Third.  A  just  view  of  human  nature  and  of  re- 
ligious experience  proves  that  believers  of  all  ages 
do  need  a  regular  Sabbath  day — that  it  is  useful, 
yea,  necessary,  for  them,  and  a  blessing  to  their 
souls.  Man  is  a  creature  of  habit;  he  is  a  finite 
creature;  he  cannot  do  two  things  at  the  same  time. 
His  soul  needs  just  such  an  ordinance. 

The  reader  must  note  that  the  Bible  speaks  of  the 
Sabbath  not  as  a  ritual  burden  laid  on  the  neck  of 
the  Church  because  it  was  in  its  minority,  but  as  a 
privilege  and  a  blessing.  We  are  "  to  call  the  Sab- 
bath a  delight,  holy  to  the  Lord,  and  honorable '' 
(Isa.  58  :  13) ;  "  Blessed  is  the  man  .  .  .  that  keep- 
eth  the  Sabbath  from  polluting  it"  (Isa.  56  :  2); 
"The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man"  (Mark  2  :  27); 
^'  The  Lord  blessed  the  Sabbath  day,  and  hallowed 
it"  (Ex.  20  :  11).  The  argument  is  this  :  Since  the 
Sabbath  is  a  needed  blessing,  if  God  has  abrogated 
the  Jewish  Sabbath  and  given  to  us  no  Christian 
Sabbath  in  place  of  it,  the  new  dispensation  is  less 
blessed  than  the  old.  But  who  can  admit  this? 
Did  kings  and  prophets  desire  to  see  the  less  blessed 
day  rather  than  their  own  ?  The  new  dispensation 
is  always  represented  in  the  Bible  as  more  blessed 
than  the  old,  more  crowned  with  privilege  and  bet- 
ter furnished  with  means  of  grace. 

Fourth.  This  view  represents  the  apostle,  an  in- 
spired man,  as  setting  up  a  standard  of  Christian 
experience  which  was  found  in  practice  unsuited  to 
human  nature.     That  Christians  did  observe  sacred 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  51 

days  in  tlie  apostle's  time  these  writers  admit,  and 
also  that  the  usage  was  approved.  Bnt  they  say  it 
was  not  founded  on  any  divine  authority;  the  apos- 
tle had  just  repealed  all  that.  Then  on  who.se  au- 
thority? That  of  the  uninspired  Churcli.  Their 
view,  then,  is,  that  the  apostle,  sweeping  away  all 
Sabbaths  and  Lord's  days,  invites  Christians  to  as- 
cend to  his  lofty  and  devoted  experience,  which  had 
no  use  for  a  set  Sabbath  because  all  his  days  were 
consecrated.  But  as  it  was  found  that  this  did  not 
suit  the  actual  Christian  state  of  most  Christians, 
human  authority  -was  allowed,  and  even  encour- 
aged, to  appoint  Sundays,  Easters  and  Whitsuntides 
for  them.  The  objections  are:  First,  that  this  coun- 
tenances "  will-worship,"  or  the  intrusion  of  man's 
inventions  into  God's  service ;  second,  it  is  an  im- 
plied insult  to  Paul's  inspiration,  assuming  that  he 
made  a  practical  blunder,  which  the  Church  synods, 
wiser  than  his  inspiration,  had  to  mend  by  a  human 
expedient ;  and  third,  we  have  here  a  practical  con- 
fession that,  after  all,  the  average  ISTew-Testament 
Christian  does  need  a  stated  holy  day,  and  there- 
fore the  ground  of  the  Sabbath  command  is  per- 
petual and  moral. 

For  these  reasons  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  agree 
that  the  apostle  Paul  meant  what  these  men  say. 
What,  then,  did  he  mean  in  the  three  passages? 
A  few  historical  facts  will  plainly  tell  us;  and 
these  facts  are  not  disputed  by  those  who  differ 
from  us. 


52  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

After  the  new  dispensation  was  set  up,  the  Chris- 
tians converted  from  among  the  Jews  had  generally 
combined  the  worship  of  Judaism  with  that  of  Chris- 
tianity. They  observed  the  Lord's  day,  baptism  and 
the  Lord's  Supper,  but  they  also  continued  to  keep 
the  seventh  day,  circumcision  and  the  passover.  Nor 
was  this  wrong  for  them  during  the  transition  state. 
Acts  (ch.  21)  tells  us  that  the  apostle  Paul  did  so 
himself.  But  at  first  it  was  proposed  by  them  to 
enforce  this  double  system  on  all  Gentile  Christians 
as  a  permanent  one.  Of  this  plan  we  have  the  full 
history  in  Acts  15,  where  it  was  rebuked  by  the 
apostles  and  elders  at  Jerusalem.  A  certain  part 
of  the  Jewish  Christians  (out  of  which  ultimately 
grew  the  Ebionite  sect)  continued,  however,  to  ob- 
serve the  forms  of  both  dispensations,  and  restless 
spirits  among  the  churches  planted  by  Paul,  which 
contained  both  Jewish  and  Gentile  members,  con- 
tinued to  make  trouble  on  this  point.  Some  of 
them  conjoined  with  this  Ebionite  view  the  graver 
heresy  of  justification  by  the  merit  of  ritual  and 
ascetic  observances,  as  we  see  in  the  Epistles  to  the 
Galatians  and  Colossians.  Thus  at  that  day  this 
spectacle  was  exhibited:  In  the  mixed  Christian 
churches  some  brethren  went  to  the  synagogue  on 
Saturday  and  to  the  church  on  Sunday,  keeping 
both  days  holy.  Other  brethren  (Gentiles)  paid  no 
respect  to  Saturday,  and  kept  only  Sunday.  Others 
again  (Jews)  felt  bound  to  keep  not  only  Saturday 
and  Sunday,  but  all  the  Jewish  sacred  times — the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  53 

new  moons,  the  paschal,  pentecostal  and  atonement 
feasts  and  the  sabbatical  years.  Here  was  ground 
of  difference  and  of  mutual  accusations.  This  was 
the  mischief  to  which  the  apostle  had  to  bring  a 
remedy.  We  may  add  that  the  question  about 
clean  and  unclean  meats  was  mingled  with  that 
about  Jewish  days.  Was  it  right  now  for  any 
Jewish  Christian  to  do  as  the  Gentile  Christians  did 
— use  bacon,  lard  and  the  butcher's  meat  of  animals 
which  had  been  killed  at  pagan  altars? 

Now,  let  us  see  the  divine  truth  and  wisdom  with 
which  the  apostle  settled  the  disputes.  One  thing 
which  he  enjoins  (at  the  end  of  Rom.  14)  is,  that 
whether  any  man's  light  is  wholly  correct  or  not, 
he  must  act  conscientiously.  He  must  not  do  the 
thing  which  honestly  seemed  to  him  wrong,  for  if 
he  did  there  was  sin — the  sin  of  outraging  his  own 
conscience,  even  though  his  scruple  turned  out  to 
be  a  mistake.  Then,  first  of  all,  let  everybody  act 
conscientiously.  He  tells  them,  secondly  (Rom.  14  : 
3, 4),  not  to  be  censorious,  but  to  respect  each  other's 
conscientious  convictions,  even  when  they  seemed 
groundless.  For  there  is  no  positive  sin  in  itself  in 
letting  alone  bacon,  for  instance,  or  stopping  work 
on  Saturday ;  and  if  a  brother's  mind  is  under  error 
as  to  the  duty  of  doing  so,  he  deserves  our  respect 
at  least  for  conscientiously  denying  himself  in  these 
things.  But,  third :  When  the  apostle  saw  some 
professed  Christians  teaching  that  a  man  should 
make   self-righteous    merit  by  continuing  to   bur- 


54  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

clen  himself  witli  the  Jewish  new  moons,  sabbaths, 
fasts,  annual  passover  feasts  and  sabbatical  years 
after  the  obligation  of  them  was  in  fact  repealed, 
he  confessed  that  this  alarmed  him  (Gal.  4  :  11), 
and  made  him  feel  as  though  all  his  trouble  in 
preaching  salvation  by  free  grace  to  them  was  to 
go  for  nothing.  For  this  idea  of  making  merit  by 
observing  self-imposed  ceremonies  and  troublesome 
rites  was  entirely  a  different  matter  from  those  other 
conscientious  mistakes,  and  it  involved  the  very  poi- 
son of  will-worship  and  self-righteousness.  Hence 
(Col.  2  :  16  to  end),  he  expressly  and  solemnly  con- 
demns it  all.  This  never  had  been  the  gospel  either 
under  the  Old  Testament  or  the  New.  To  appoint 
the  means  of  grace  for  his  people — this  was  God's 
part.  As  long  as  any  ordinance  was  commanded 
by  him,  our  part  was  to  make  use  of  it,  humbly 
and  faithfully,  cis  a  means  of  grace,  in  order  to 
strengthen  the  faith  and  repentance  which  bring  us 
to  the  Saviour.  But  the  moment  any  man  under- 
took to  build  up  his  self- righteousness  on  will-wor- 
ship he  was  under  a  soul-destroying  error  which 
must  not  be  tolerated  one  moment.  Hence  the 
apostle  commands  that  these  Jewish  holy  days, 
feasts  and  fasts  are  not  to  be  enforced  on  anybody ; 
and  he  explains  that  they  were  no  longer  binding, 
because  that  new  dispensation  of  which  they  were 
shadows  or  types  had  now  come,  with  its  own  di- 
vinely-appointed ordinances,  and  taken  the  place 
of  others.     He  did  not  design  to  be  understood  as 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  55 

speaking  at  all  of  the  Lord's  day,  which  is  one  of 
these  New-Testament  ordinances.  He  means  only 
the  Jewish  holy  days.  Does  not  the  consistency  of 
this  view  with  itself  and  the  Scriptures  show  that 
it  is  the  true  one? 

But  some  one  may  rejoin  that  he  was  speaking  of 
the  Lord's  day  also,  because  he  says  (Col.  2  :  16), 
*^  hez  no  man,  therefore,  judge  you  in  respect  of  a 
holy  day,  or  of  the  new  moon,  or  of  the  Sabbath 
days,^'  This  objector  is  under  a  delusion.  The 
w^ord  "  Sabbath  "  is  never  ap{)lied  by  a  New-Testa- 
ment writer  or  by  one  of  the  writers  of  the  primi- 
tive Church  to  the  Lord's  day  or  Christian  Sabbath 
— never  once.  This  all  learned  critics  admit.  All 
those  early  writers  carefully  reserve  the  word  "  Sab- 
bath "  (which  is  a  Hebrew  word)  to  denote  the  holy 
days  of  the  Old  Testament ;  and  when  they  would 
speak  of  the  holy  day  of  the  New  Testament  they 
call  it  ''first  day  of  the  week"  or  "  Lord's  day"  or 
''  Sunday."  The  Westminster  Assembly  did  indeed 
say  of  the  Lord's  day,  "  which  is  the  Christian  Sab- 
bath." This  was  intended  to  teach  an  important 
truth  which  had  been  denied  by  the  objectors,  that 
the  Lord's  day  is  to  us  by  divine  appointment  what 
the  Sabbath  was  to  the  Jews  as  to  its  main  sub- 
stance. 

The  word  ''sabbath"  was  of  wide  significance 
among  the  Jews.  It  meant  not  only  the  hallowed 
seventh  day,  but  also  the  "week"  or  space  of 
seven  days.     The  Pharisee  says ;  "  I  fast  twice  in 


Ot)  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

the  week"  (Luke  18  :  12).  In  the  Greek  it  is 
"twice  in  the  Sabbath."  The  word  was  also  a 
common  name  for  all  the  Jewish  festivals,  includ- 
ing even  the  whole  sabbatical  year,  with  new  moons, 
passovers  and  such-like  holy  days.  "  I  gave  them 
my  Sabbaths  [my  religious  festivals]  to  be  a  sign 
between  them  and  me"  (Ezek.  20:12).  "The 
land  shall  enjoy  her  Sabbaths"  (Lev.  23  :  24;  26  : 
34 ;  compare  2  Chron.  36  :  21).  Hence,  the  apos- 
tle's mention  of  "Sabbath  days"  does  not  certainly 
prove  that  he  alluded  to  the  seventh  day  partic- 
ularly ;  he  may  have  used  the  word  as  a  com- 
mon name  for  Jewish  holy  days.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  we  know  that  he  did  not  intend  the  Lord^s 
day,  because  the  early  writers  never  apply  that 
name  to  it. 

This  Christian  holy  day  is  not  in  question,  then, 
in  these  texts,  for  about  the  observance  of  this  we 
believe  there  was  no  dispute  or  diversity  in  the 
churches.  To  the  sanctification  of  that  Jewish  and 
Gentile  Christians  alike  consented.  When  Paul 
teaches  that  the  observing  or  not  observing  of  a 
day  is,  like  the  matter  of  meats,  non-essential,  the 
natural  and  fair  construction  is  that  he  means  those 
days  which  were  in  debate,  and  no  others.  When 
he  implies  that  some  innocently  "  regarded  every 
day  alike,"  we  should  understand  every  one  of 
those  days  about  which  there  was  no  diversity,  not 
the  Christian's  Lord's  day,  about  which  there  was 
no  dispute.     The  passage  in  Colossians  is  upon  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  57 

same  subject  with  those  in  Romans  and  Galatians. 
Hence  it  is  fair  to  regard  the  one  as  an  explanation 
of  the  others.  Thus,  the  use  of  the  phrase  "  Sabbath 
days'^  in  the  first  is  an  advantage  to  our  cause,  for  it 
explains  the  "  every  day  alike''  of  Romans  as  really 
meaning  "  every  sabbatical  day ; ''  that  is  to  say,  every 
Jewish  holy  day,  such  being  the  precise  meaning  of 
"Sabbath"  in  Paul's  mouth. 

One  more  objection  to  our  view  remains,  which  we 
wish  to  meet  fairly.  It  is  this :  Grant  that  by  the 
phrase  "  Sabbath  days"  in  Colossians  the  apostle  did 
not  mean  to  inckide  the  Lord's  day.  He  says  of  all 
the  Jewish  sabbata,  including  the  seventh  days, 
"  which  are  a  shadow  of  things  to  come,  but  the 
body  is  of  Christ."  It  thus  appears  that  the  Sabbath 
day  of  the  fourth  commandment  was  a  type,  the  sub- 
stance of  which  was  to  be  found  in  Christ,  even  as 
the  passover  was  a  type  of  him.  Why,  then,  should 
not  the  Sabbath  pass  away  with  the  passover  and 
the  other  types  ?  There  is  no  positive  New-Testa- 
ment law  re-enacting  it.     Thus  our  opponents. 

The  answer  is :  The  Jewish  Sabbath  was  a  sign, 
and  also  something  else.  Its  witnessing  use  has 
passed  away  for  Jews,  so  far  as  it  was  to  them  a 
sign  of  their  exodus,  their  peculiar  theocratic  cov- 
enant and  their  title  to  the  land  of  Canaan.  But 
its  other  uses,  as  a  means  of  grace  and  sign  of 
heaven,  remain  for  them  and  for  all.  Moreover, 
the  Christian  Sabbath,  which  is  the  Lord's  day,  re- 
mains just  as  much  a  "sign"  of  our  Christian  sep- 


58  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

aration  from  tlie  world  and  engagement  to  be  the 
Lord's  as  the  seventh  day  ever  was  to  the  Jew. 
And  our  faithfulness  in  sanctifying  the  Lord's  day 
ought  to  be  as  plain  a  mark  distinguishing  us  from 
unbelievers  as  that  which  distinguished  the  Hebrews 
from  the  Amorites.  That  it  always  was  more  than 
a  mark  we  proved  in  the  first  division  of  this  dis- 
cussion. It  is  as  old  as  the  race ;  it  was  given  to 
all  the  race.  The  ground  of  the  institution  is  as 
universal  as  the  race,  the  com})letion  of  creation. 
It  is  dictated  by  a  universal  necessity  of  man's  na- 
ture, which  has  not  at  all  changed  in  passing  from 
one  dispensation  to  another.  It  was  in  full  force 
before  the  typical  ceremonies  of  Moses.  It  was  en- 
joined on  Gentiles,  who  had  no  business  with  those 
ceremonies.  It  had  its  permanent,  moral  and  spir- 
itual use  before  Moses  came.  God  then  placed  an 
additional  sacrifice  on  it  for  a  i)articular  purpose. 
When  the  typical  dispensation  passed  away,  then 
this  temporary  use  of  the  Sabbath  fell  off,  and  the 
original  institution  remains.  God's  day  is  now  to 
us  just  what  it  was  to  Adam,  Abel,  Enoch,  Noah, 
Abraham.  How  reasonable  this  is  may  be  shown 
from  the  very  comparison  which  the  objector  makes, 
that  of  the  passover.  The  passover  was  a  type,  but 
it  was  something  else — a  commemoration  of  redemp- 
tion. It  foreshadowed  "the  Lamb  of  God  which 
taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world,"  but  it  commem- 
orated the  redemption  of  the  people  from  death  in 
Egypt.     Now,  let  us  see  what  happened.    The  Lamb 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  59 

of  God  came,  and  was  actually  sacrificed  on  Calvary, 
"  by  one  offering  taking  away  sin."  Was  the  pass- 
over  revoked  f  Not  at  all.  Its  typical  part  was  re- 
voked ;  the  lamb  was  no  more  killed  and  roasted. 
But  its  commemorative  part  remains  to  this  day. 
The  bread  and  wine  are  still  consecrated  by  divine 
appointment  for  a  sacrament,  and  the  Lord's  Supper 
remains  as  ilie  Christianas  passover.  This  is  j  ust  what 
the  apostle  teaches  in  1  Cor.  5  :  7,  8. 

When  Israel  came  to  Sinai,  God  did  select  this 
Sabbath  day,  which  had  existed  before  as  a  com- 
memoration of  creation  and  a  moral  and  spiritual 
ordinance  for  all  people,  to  serve  the  additional  pur- 
pose of  a  ^'sign''  between  him  and  Israel.  It,  was 
a  pledge  and  emblem  of  their  covenant  as  his  pecu- 
liar people  (Deut.  5 :  13;  Ex.  31 :  13;  Ezek.  20  :  12). 
It  was  for  a  time  possibly  an  emblem  of  their  peace- 
ful home  in  Canaan  (Heb.  4  :  4-11).  It  is  for  us,  as 
for  them,  an  emblem  of  our  gracious  rest  in  heaven 
(Heb.  4  :  9).  Thus,  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath 
was,  like  that  of  the  new  moon,  marked  by  two  ad- 
ditional sacrifices.  These  temporary  uses  passed 
away,  of  course,  with  the  coming  of  the  new  dis- 
pensation. But  the  moral  and  perpetual  uses  of 
the  ordinance  having  been  already  transferred  by 
Christ  to  the  Lord^s  day,  the  seventh  day  remained 
at  the  time  of  Paul's  writing  as  mere  a  shadow  to 
the  New-Testament  saint  as  a  new  moon.  In  this 
aspect  the  apostle  might  well  argue  that  the  stick- 
ling for  it  betrayed  judaizing.     Moreover,  when  the 


60  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

apostle  says  (Col.  2  :  17)  that  the  new  moons  and 
Sabbath  days  are  a  "  shadoAv  of  things  to  come," 
his  real  meaning  is,  the  sacrifices  celebrated  on  those 
days  were  the  shadow.  Literally,  the  days  them- 
selves were  not  shadows,  but  only  the  typical  ser- 
vices appointed  on  them. 

III.  We  shall  now,  in  the  third  place,  attempt 
to  show  the  ground  on  which  the  Sabbath  "  from 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  was  changed  into  the  first 
day  of  the  week,  which  in  Scripture  is  called  the 
Lord's  day,  and  is  to  be  continued  to  the  end  of 
the  world  as  the  Christian  Sabbath.'^  This  proof 
is  chiefly  historical,  and  divides  itself  into  two' 
branches,  the  inspired  and  the  uninspired.  The  first 
proceeds  upon  two  plain  principles.  One  is,  that 
example  may  be  as  valid  and  instructive  a  guide  to 
duty  as  precept.  Or,  to  state  it  in  another  form,  the 
precedent  set  by  Christ  and  his  apostles  may  be  as 
binding  as  their  command.  The  other  is,  that 
whatever  necessarily  follows  from  Scripture  "by 
good  and  necessary  consequence''  is  as  really  au- 
thorized by  it  as  "what  is  expressly  set  down." 

Our  first  argument  shows  that  every  probability 
is  in  favor  of  the  Sunday's  being  now  God's  day,  in 
advance  of  particular  testimony.  We  prove  under 
the  first  main  head  that  a  Sabbath  institution  is  uni- 
versal and  perpetual — that  the  command  to  keep  it 
holy  belongs  to  that  law  from  which  one  jot  or  one 
tittle  cannot  pass  till  heaven  and  earth  pass.     But  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  61 

apostle  Paul  (in  Col.  2  :  16, 17)  clearly  tells  us  thatthe 
seventh  day  is  no  longer  the  Sabbath.  It  has  been 
changed.  To  what  other  day  has  it  been  changed  ? 
The  law  is  not  totally  repealed ;  it  cannot  be.  What 
day  has  taken  the  place  of  the  seventh  ?  None  is 
so  likely  to  be  the  substitute  as  the  Lord's  day; 
this  must  be  the  day. 

The  main  direct  argument  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  Christ  and  his  apostles  did,  from  the  very 
day  of  the  resurrection,  hallow  the  first  day  of  the 
week  as  a  religious  day.  To  see  the  full  force  of 
this  fact  we  must  view  it  in  the  light  of  the  first 
argument.  We  remember  that  the  disciples,  like 
all  men  of  all  ages,  are  bound  by  the  Decalogue  to 
keep  holy  God's  Sabbath.  We  see  them  remit  the 
observance  of  the  seventh  day  as  no  longer  binding, 
and  we  see  them  observing  the  first.  Must  we  not 
conclude  that  these  inspired  men  regarded  the  au- 
thority of  God  as  now  attaching  to  this  Lord's 
day? 

We  shall  find,  then,  that  the  disciples  commenced 
the  observance  of  the  first  day  on  the  very  day  of 
Christ's  resurrection,  and  thenceforward  continued 
it.  John  20  :  19  tells  us  that  the  "same  day, 
being  the  first  day  of  the  week,"  the  disciples 
were  assembled  at  evening  w^ith  closed  doors,  and 
Christ  came  and  stood  in  the  midst.  Can  we 
doubt  that  they  met  for  worship?  In  the  twen- 
ty-sixth verse  we  learn,  "And  after  eight  days 
again  the  disciples  were  within,  and  Thomas  with 


62  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

them  "  (who  had  been  absent  before).  "  Then  came 
Jesus,  the  doors  being  shut,  and  stood  in  the  midst, 
and  said,  Peace  be  unto  you."  None  will  doubt 
that  this  was  also  a  meeting  for  worship,  and  the 
language  implies  that  it  was  their  second  meeting. 
Now,  it  is  admitted  by  all  that  the  Jews,  in  count- 
ing time,  always  included  in  their  count  the  days 
with  which  the  period  began  and  ended.  The  best- 
known  instance  of  this  rule  is  seen  in  the  rising  of 
Christ.  He  was  to  be  "three  days  in  the  heart  of 
the  earth,"  but  the  three  days  were  made  out  only 
by  counting  the  day  of  his  death  and  the  day  of  his 
rising,  although  the  latter  event  happened  early  in 
the  morning  of  that  day.  By  this  mode  of  count- 
ing the  eighth  day,  or  full  week  from  the  disciples' 
first  meeting,  brings  us  again  to  the  first  day  of  the 
week.  Thus  we  learn  that  twice  at  least  between 
the  resurrection  and  Pentecost  the  first  day  was 
kept  as  the  Lord's  day. 

But  the  decisive  instance  is  that  of  Pentecost 
itself.  The  reader  will  see,  by  consulting  Lev. 
23  :  15,  16  or  Deut.  15:9,  that  this  day  was  fixed 
in  the  following  manner:  On  the  morrow  after  that 
Sabbath  (seventh  day)  which  was  included  within 
the  passover  week  a  sheaf  of  the  earliest  ri})e  corn 
was  cut,  brought  fresh  into  the  sanctuary  and  pre- 
sented as  a  thank-offering  unto  God.  Tlius,  the 
day  of  this  ceremony  must  always  be  tlie  first  day 
of  the  wee^k,  corresponding  to  our  Lord's  day.  From 
this  day  they  were  to  count  seven  weeks  complete, 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  63 

and  tiie  illiieth  day  was  to  be  Pentecost  day,  or  the 
beginning  of  their  "  feast  of  ingathering/'  Re- 
membering, now,  that  the  Israelites  always  in- 
cluded in  their  reckoning  the  day  from  which  and 
the  day  to  which  they  counted,  we  see  that  the  fif- 
tieth day  brings  us  again  to  the  first  day  of  the 
week.  We  are  told  expressly  that  Christ  rose  on 
the  first  day  of  the  week. 

AV^e  thus  learn  the  important  fact  that  the  day 
selected  by  God  for  setting  up  the  gospel  dispensa- 
tion and  for  the  great  pentecostal  outpouring  was 
the  Lord's  day — a  significant  and  splendid  testi- 
mony to  the  sacred  honor  it  was  intended  to  have 
in  the  Christian  ages. 

This  epoch  was  indeed  the  creation  of  a  new  world 
in  the  spiritual  sense.  The  work  was  equal  in  glory 
and  everlasting  moment  to  that  first  creation  which 
caused  "the  morning  stars  to  sing  together  and  all 
the  sons  of  God  to  shout  for  joy."  Well  might  God 
substitute  the  first  day  for  the  seventh  when  the  first 
day  had  now  become  the  sign  of  two  separate  events, 
the  rising  of  Christ  and  the  founding  of  the  new 
dispensation,  either  of  which  is  as  momentous  and 
blessed  to  us  as  the  world's  foundation. 

But  we  read  in  Acts  1  :  14  and  2  :  1  that  this 
seventh  Lord's  day  was  also  employed  by  the  apos- 
tles and  disciples  as  a  day  for  religious  worship; 
and  it  was  while  they  were  thus  engaged  that  they 
received  the  divine  sanction  in  their  blessed  baptism 
of  fire  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,     Then  the  first  pul> 


64  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

lie  proclamation  of  the  gospel  under  the  new  dis- 
pensation began,  and  the  model  was  set  up  for  the 
consecration  of  the  new  Christian  Sabbath  (not  by 
the  burning  of  additional  lambs)  by  public  preach- 
ing, the  two  sacraments  of  baptism  and  the  Supper 
and  the  oblation  of  their  worldly  substance  to  God. 
At  this  all-important  stage  every  step,  every  act,  of 
the  divine  providence  recorded  by  inspiration  in  the 
Acts  was  formative  and  fundamental.  Hence  we 
must  believe  that  this  event  was  meant  by  God  as 
a  forcible  precedent,  establishing  the  Lord's  day  as 
our  Christian  Sabbath. 

Let  the  reader  carefully  weigh  this  question : 
Have  we  any  other  kind  of  warrant  for  the  frame- 
work of  the  Church  ?  All  Christians,  for  instance, 
believe  that  the  deacon's  office  in  the  Church  is  of 
perpetual  divine  appointment.  Even  Rome  has  it, 
though  perverted.  What  is  the  basis  of  that  belief? 
The  precedent  set  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Acts.  The 
apostles  there  say,  It  is  not  good  "  for  us  to  leave 
the  word  of  God  and  serve  tables,"  etc.  They  do 
not  say  even  as  much  about  the  universal  perpetuity 
of  this  office  as  Paul  says  to  Titus  (ch.  1  :  5)  about 
the  elder's  office:  "Ordain  elders  in  every  city." 
But  all  sensible  men  see  that  the  principle  stated 
and  the  example  set  are  enough,  and  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  obviously  taught  the  inspired  historians  to  re- 
late this  formative  act  of  the  new  dispensation  as  a 
model  for  all  churches.  The  warrant  for  making 
the  Lord's  day  the  Sabbath  is  of  the  same  kind. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  65 

It  is  most  evident,  from  the  New-Testament  his- 
tory, that  the  apostles  and  the  churches  they  planted 
uniformly  hallowed  the  Lord^s  day.  The  instances 
are  not  numerous,  but  they  are  distinct. 

The  next  clear  instance  is  in  Acts  20  :  7.  The 
apostle  Paul  was  now  returning  from  his  famous 
mission  to  Macedonia  and  Achaia  in  full  prospect 
of  captivity  at  Jerusalem.  He  stops  at  the  favorite 
little  church  of  Troas,  on  the  Asiatic  coast,  a  little 
south  of  the  Hellespont,  to  spend  a  week  with  his 
converts  there:  "And  upon  the  first  day  of  the 
week,  when  the  disciples  came  together  to  break 
bread,  Paul  preached  unto  them  (ready  to  depart 
on  the  morrow),  and  continued  his  speech  until 
midnight.^'  Here  we  have  a  double  evidence  of 
our  point.  First,  Paul  preached  to  the  disciples  on 
this  day,  while  he  had  been,  as  the  sixth  verse  shows, 
a  whole  week  at  Troas,  including  the  Jewish  Sab- 
bath. Why  did  he  wait  a  whole  week  ?  Why  did 
not  the  meeting,  with  the  sermon  and  sacrament, 
take  place  on  the  Jewish  Sabbath?  We  learn 
from  verse  sixteen  that  Paul  had  very  little  time 
to  sj)are,  because  he  had  to  make  the  whole  jour- 
ney from  Philippi  to  Jerusalem,  with  all  his  way- 
side visits,  within  the  six  weeks  between  the  end 
of  the  paschal  and  beginning  of  the  pentecosta,] 
feast.  He  was  obviously  waiting  for  the  Churches 
sacred  day  in  order  to  join  them  in  their  public  wor- 
ship, just  as  a  missionary  would  wait  now  under 
similar    circumstances.     But,   second.    The   words 


^6  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

"When the  disciples  came  together  to  break  bread" 
show  that  the  first  day  of  the  week  was  the  one  on 
which  they  met  to  celebrate  the  Lord's  Supper.  So 
it  appears  that  this  church  at  Troas,  planted  and 
trained  by  Paul,  kept  the  first  day  of  the  week  for 
public  worship  and  the  sacrament,  and  the  inspired 
man  puts  himself  to  some  inconvenience  to  comply 
with  their  usage.  It  has  indeed  been  objected  that 
he  selected  this  day  not  because  it  was  the  Lord's 
day,  but  because  he  could  not  wait  any  longer. 
This  is  exploded  by  the  fact  that  he  had  already 
waited  six  days,  including  the  Jewish  Sabbath ;  he 
was  evidently  waiting  for  this  day  because  it  was 
the  Lord's  day. 

The  next  clear  instance  is  in  1  Cor.  16 : 1,  2 :  ^'IN'ow, 
concerning  the  collection  for  the  saints,  as  I  have 
given  order  to  the  churches  of  Galatia,  even  so  do  ye. 
Upon  the  first  day  of  the  week  let  every  one  of  you 
lay  by  him  in  store,  as  God  hath  prospered  him,  that 
there  be  no  gatherings  when  I  come."  We  here  learn 
two  things  :  that  the  weekly  oblation  of  almsgiving 
was  fixed  for  the  Lord's  day,  and  that  this  rule  was 
enacted  not  only  for  the  church  of  Corinth,  but  for 
all  the  churches  of  Galatia.  It  seems  a  very  clear 
inference  that  the  apostle  afterward  made  the  rule 
uniform  in  other  churches  as  he  organized  them. 
Again,  we  find  the  objectors  arguing  that,  admit- 
ting what  we  claim,  we  have  not  proved  that  there 
was  any  regular  public  worship  on  the  Lord's  day, 
because  it  is  said,  "  Lay  by  you  in  store ; "  that  is. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH  67 

at  home.  But  the  answers  are  two:  The  words, 
"Lay  by  him,"  etc.,  are,  literally,  "place  to  him- 
self" or  "segregate" — "treasuring  according  as  the 
Lord  hath  prospered  him."  It  is  a  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  apostle's  meaning  to  take  the  word  "treas- 
uring" as  putting  a  piece  of  money  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing in  a  separate  box  or  purse  at  home.  Most- fre- 
quently, as  we  know  from  history,  it  was  not  money, 
but  bread,  meat,  fruit,  clothing,  a  part  of  anything 
with  which  Providence  had  blessed  them ;  and  the 
undoubted  usage  in  the  earliest  age  after  the  apostles 
was  to  carry  this  oblation  with  them  to  church  every 
Lord's  day  morning  and  give  it  to  the  deacons,  who 
put  it  into  a  common  stock  for  charitable  uses.  The 
words  "  treasuring  it"  refer,  says  Calvin,  to  a  wholly 
different  idea — to  that  which  our  Saviour  expresses 
(Matt.  6  :  20) :  "  Lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures  in 
heaven ; "  to  that  idea  which  the  charitable  Chris- 
tian expressed  on  his  tombstone :  "  What  I  kept,  I 
lost ;  what  I  gave  away,  I  have."  It  is  the  Lord's 
treasury  which  the  apostle  here  has  in  view — the 
Lord's  "store.'^  So  that  the  natural  meaning  of 
the  precept  is  fairly  presented  in  this  paraphrase : 
"Let  every  one  every  Sunday  morning  set  apart, 
according  as  the  Lord  hath  prospered  him,  what  he 
intends  to  carry  to  church  with  him  to  put  into  the 
Lord's  store."  But,  second.  Even  if  we  contradict 
the  unanimous  voice  of  history,  testifying  that  the 
weekly  oblation  took  place  at  the  church-meeting 
and  went  at  once  into  the  deacon's  hands,  the  truth 


68  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

remains  that  this  oblation  was  an  act  of  worship. 
(See  Phil.  4  :  18 ;  2  Cor.  9  :  12, 13.)  This  weekly 
oblation  was,  then,  a  weekly  act  of  worship,  and  it 
was  appointed  by  inspired  authority  to  be  done  on 
the  Lord's  day.  That  makes  this  day  a  sacred  day 
of  worship ;  we  care  not  whether  this  oblation  was 
public  or  private,  so  far  as  this  argument  is  con- 
cerned.* 

*  The  next  place  to  be  cited  is  Heb.  4  :  9.  This  verse  (with 
its  context,  which  must  be  carefully  read)  teaches  that,  as  there 
remains  to  believers  under  the  Christian  dispensation  a  hope 
of  an  eternal  rest,  so  there  remains  to  us  an  earthly  Sabbath  to 
foreshadow  it.  The  points  to  be  noticed  in  the  explanation  of 
the  chapter  are :  That  God  has  an  eternal  spiritual  rest ;  that 
he  invited  Old-Testament  believers  to  share  it ;  that  it  is  some- 
thing higher  than  Israel's  home  in  Canaan,  because  after  Joshua 
had  fully  installed  Israel  in  that  rest,  God's  rest  is  still  held  up 
as  something  future.  The  seventh  day  (verse  4)  was  the  memo- 
rial of  God's  rest,  and  was  thus  connected  with  it.  It  was  under 
the  old  dispensation,  as  under  the  new,  a  spiritual  faith  which 
introduced  into  God's  rest,  and  it  was  unbelief  which  excluded 
from  it.  But  as  God's  rest  was  something  higher  than  a  home 
in  Canaan,  and  was  still  offered  in  the  ninety-fifth  Psalm  long 
after  Joshua  settled  Israel  in  that  rest,  it  follows  (verse  9)  that 
there  still  remains  a  sabbatism,  or  Sabbath-keeping,  for  God's 
people  under  the  new  dispensation ;  and  hence  (verse  11)  we 
ought  to  seek  to  enter  into  that  spiritual  rest  of  God,  which  is 
by  faith.  Now,  let.it  be  noted  that  the  word  for  God's  ''rest" 
throughout  the  passage  is  a  different  one  from  "  Sabbath."  But 
the  apostle's  inference  is  tliat  because  God  still  offers  us  his 
"rest"  under  the  new  dispensation,  there  remaineth  to  us  a  Sab- 
bath-keeping under  this  dispensation.  What  does  this  mean  ?  Is 
the  sabbatism  identically  our  "rest"  in  faith?  But  the  seventh 
day  was  not  identically  that  rest;  it  was  the  memorial  and 
emblem  of  it.     So  now  sabbatism  is  the  memorial  and  em- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  69 

The  other  instance  of  apostolic  consecration  of 
the  first  clay  is  perhaps  the  most  instructive  of  all. 
In  Kev.  1  :  10,  John,  when  about  to  describe  how 
he  came  to  have  this  revelation,  says,  "I  was  in 
,  the  spirit  on  the  Lord's  day/'  The  venerable  apos- 
tle was  "  in  the  isle  that  is  called  Patraos  for  the 
word  of  God  and  for  the  testimony  of  Jesus."  We 
know  from  history  exactly  what  this  means.  The 
pagan  magistrates  had  banished  him  to  this  rocky, 
desolate  islet  in  the  iEgiean  Sea  as  a  punishment 
for  preaching  the  gospel  and  testifying  that  Jesus 
is  our  risen  Saviour.  He  was  there  alone,  separated 
from  all  his  brethren.  But  he  "  was  in  the  Spirit 
on  the  Lord's  day."  What  does  this  mean?  It 
means  that  he  was  doing  what  godly  people  now 
call  "  keeping  Sunday."  He  was  engaging  in  spir- 
itual exercises.  He  was  holding  communion  with 
the  Holy  Spirit.  Here,  then,  is  our  first  point: 
that  although  in  solitude,  cut  off  alike  from  Chris- 
tian meetings  and  ordinary  week-day  occupations 
by  his  banishment,  the  inspired  apostle  was  "  keep- 
ing Sunday."  It  is  the  strongest  possible  example. 
Our  second  point  is,  that  God  blessed  him  in  his 
Sabbath-keeping  with  the  greatest  spiritual  blessing 
which  perhaps  he  had  enjoyed  since  he  sat  at  the 
feet  of  Jesus.  His  Saviour  came  down  from  glory  to 
"  keep  Sunday  "  with  him.     Our  third  and  strongest 

blem  of  the  rest.  Because  the  rast  is  ours,  therefore  the  Sab- 
bath-keeping is  still  ours ;  heaven  and  its  earthly  type  belong 
equally  to  both  dispensations. 


70  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

point  is,  that  the  inspired  man  here  calls  the  day 
"  the  Lord's  day/'  There  is  no  doubt  but  that  the 
"Lord"  named  is  the  glorified  K-edeemer,  whom  he 
declares  in  his  epistle  to  be  "  the  true  God  and  eternal 
life."  There  is  but  one  consistent  and  scriptural  sense 
to  place  on  this  name  of  the  day.  It  is  the  day  that 
belongs  especially  to  the  Lord.  But  as  all  our 
days  belong  in  one  sense  to  him,  the  only  meaning 
is  that  the  first  day  of  the  week  is  now  set  apart 
and  hallowed  to  Christ.  In  Isa.  58  :  13  the  Sab- 
bath is  called  by  God  "my  holy  day;"  in  56  :  4, 
"  my  Sabbath."  That  was  God's  day ;  it  belonged 
to  God.  This  is  Christ's  day,  and  in  the  same  sense 
belongs  to  Christ.  It  is  consecrated  to  his  worship 
as  was  the  Sabbath ;  it  is  virtually  "  the  Christian 
Sabbath." 

We  now  add  the  uninspired  testimony  of  the 
early  historians  and  Fathers,  showing  that  from  the 
apostles'  days  Christians  understood  this  matter  as 
we  do,  and  consecrated  the  first  day  of  the  week. 

But  let  us  explain  in  what  sense  we  use  this  hu- 
man testimony.  In  our  view,  all  the  uninspired 
church  testimony  in  the  world,  however  venerable, 
would  never  make  it  our  religious  duty  to  keep 
Sunday  as  a  Sabbath  without  God's  own  command- 
ment. We  use  these  "  Fathers  "  simply  as  histor- 
ical witnesses.  Their  evidence  derives  its  sole  value 
from  its  relevancy  to  this  point,  whether  the  apostles^ 
who  were  inspired^  left  the  command  and  precedent  in 
the  churches  of  observing  the  Lord^s  day  as  the  Sab- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  71 

bath  of  the  fourth  commandment.  If  they  said,  ''  We 
Fathers  command  you  to  observe  Sunday,"  we  should 
reject  the  authority  as  nothing  worth.  But  when, 
as  honest  and  well-informed  witnesses,  they  testify 
that  the  apostles  taught  the  churches  to  observe 
Sunday,  we  regard  their  testimony  as  of  some 
value. 

Our  first  witness,  then,  is  a  learned  pagan,  Pliny 
the  Younger,  a  high  magistrate  under  the  emperor 
Trajan.  He  says,  in  a  letter  written  a  little  after 
the  death  of  the  apostle  John,  that  the  Christians 
were  accustomed  to  meet  for  worship  on  ^*  a  stated 
day.''  This  was  the  Lord's  day,  as  we  see  from 
other  witnesses. 

Ignatius,  the  celebrated  martyr-bishop  of  Anti- 
och,  says,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Magnesians,  written 
not  more  than  twenty  years  after  the  death  of  John, 
that  "  this  is  the  Lord's  day,  the  day  consecrated  to 
the  resurrection,  the  chief  and  queen  of  all  the 
days." 

Justin  Martyr,  who  died  about  a.  d.  160,  says 
that  the  Christians  "  neither  celebrated  the  Jewish 
festivals,  nor  observed  their  Sabbaths,  nor  practiced 
circumcision  "  {Dialogue  laith  Trypho).  In  another 
place  he  says  that  they  were  ^'  all  accustomed  to 
meet  on  the  day  which  is  denominated  Sunday,  for 
reading  the  Scriptures,  prayer,  exhortation  and  com- 
munion. The  assemblies  met  on  Sunday,  l>ecause 
this  is  the  first  day  on  which  God,  having  changed 
the  darkness  and  the  elements,  created  the  world, 


72  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

and  because  Jesus  our  Lord  on  this  day  rose  from 
the  dead/'  etc. 

Tertullian,  at  the  close  of  the  second  century, 
says :  We  Christians  "  celebrate  Sunday  as  a  joyful 
day.  On  the  Lord's  day  we  think  it  wrong  to  fast 
or  to  kneel  in  prayer.''  It  was  a  common  opinion 
of  the  early  Christians  that  all  public  prayers  on 
the  Lord's  day  should  be  uttered  standing,  because 
kneeling  is  a  more  sorrowful  attitude  and  inconsist- 
ent with  the  joy  and  blessedness  of  Christ's  day. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  a  very  learned  Christian 
contemporary  with  Tertullian,  says :  "A  true  Chris- 
tian, according  to  the  commands  of  the  gospel,  ob- 
serves the  Lord's  day  by  casting  out  all  bad  thoughts 
and  cherishing  all  goodness,  honoring  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  Lord,  which  took  place  on  that  day." 

Perhaps  the  most  valuable,  because  the  most  im- 
portant and  explicit,  as  well  as  the  most  learned, 
witness,  is  Eusebius  of  Csesarea,  who  w^as  in  his 
prime  about  A.  d.  325.  In  a  commentary  on  the 
ninety-second  Psalm,  which,  the  reader  will  remem- 
ber, is  entitled,  ^'A  psalm  or  song  for  the  Sabbath 
day,"  he  says:  "The  Word"  (Christ)  "by  the 
new  covenant  translated  and  transferred  the  feast 
of  the  Sabbath  to  the  morning  light,  and  gave  us 
the  symbol  of  the  true  rest,  the  saving  Lord's 
day,  the  first  of  light,  in  which  the  Saviour  gain- 
ed the  victory  over  death.  On  this  day,  which  is 
the  first  of  the  Light  and  the  true  Sun,  we  assem- 
ble after  the  interval  of  six  days,  and   celebrate 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  73 

holy  and  spiritual  Sabbath ;  even  all  nations  re- 
deemed by  him  throughout  the  world  assemble, 
and  do  those  things  according  to  the  spiritual  law 
which  were  decreed  for  the  priests  to  do  on  the  Sab- 
bath. All  things  which  it  was  duty  to  do  on  the 
Sabbath,  these  we  have  transferred  to  the  Lord's 
day,  as  more  appropriately  belonging  unto  it,  be- 
cause it  has  the  precedence,  and  is  first  in  rank,  and 
more  honorable  than  the  Jewish  Sabbath.  It  hath 
been  enjoined  on  us  that  we  should  meet  together 
on  this  day ;  and  it  is  evidence  that  we  should  do 
these  things  announced  in  this  psalm." 

These  citations  from  the  pastors  of  the  early 
Church  might  be  continued  to  great  length.  Not 
only  individuals,  but  church  councils,  added  their 
sanctions  to  the  sacred  observance  of  the  Lord's 
day.  Thus,  the  Council  of  Laodicea  (a.  d.  363) 
commanded  Christians  to  rest  on  the"  Lord's  day 
from  all  secular  labors  except  those  imposed  by 
necessity.  Many  other  councils  during  the  fourth 
century  ordain  that  public  worship  and  the  sacra- 
ments shall  be  observed  on  the  same  day.  It  may 
be  asked.  If  this  sanctification  of  the  Lord's  day 
w^as  of  divine  appointment  through  the  apostles,  why 
do  we  not  hear  of  earlier  councils  enacting  its  observ- 
ance nearer  the  days  of  the  apostles  ?  The  answer  is 
very  simple:  During  the  ages  of  persecution,  which 
only  ceased  with  the  accession  of  Constantine,  coun- 
cils could  meet  rarely  and  with  great  peril,  and  the 
persecutors  busily  destroyed  their  records. 


74  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  controversy 
about  the  Lord's  day  are  aware  that  quite  a  num- 
ber of  writers,  especially  those  of  prelatical  views, 
are  in  the  habit  of  roundly  asserting  that  the 
"Fathers"  held  the  fourth  commandment  to  be 
abrogated;  that  they  grounded  their  observance 
of  the  Lord's  day  not  on  God's  authority,  but  on 
comity,  convenience  and  church  authority,  like  the 
other  feasts ;  and  that  no  "  Father "  bases  the  ob- 
servance of  the  Lord's  day  on  the  fourth  com- 
mandment expressly.  They  are  very  fond  of  quot- 
ing the  great  Augustine,  for  instance,  as  teaching 
that  the  fourth  commandment  alone  among  the 
ten  was  "  partly  figurative,"  and  so  abolished  with 
the  other  types.  The  arrogancy  and  dogmatism 
with  which  these  assertions  are  made  by  prelatic 
adversaries  of  God's  law  are  offensive  to  every  fair 
and  reverent  mind.  Those  who  are  best  acquaint- 
ed with  these  Fathers  will  be  least  disposed  to 
attach  importance  to  their  assertions,  whether  con- 
current with  or  against  God's  truth.  Had  these 
prelatists,  for  instance,  the  honesty  to  quote  all  that 
their  favorite  Augustine  says  in  that  same  exposi- 
tion of  the  Decalogue,  the  sensible  reader  would 
feel  the  contempt  for  his  opinions  on  this  subject 
which  they  deserve.  We  should  see  this  great 
Father  expounding  each  of  the  ten  commandments 
as  typified  in  the  "  ten  plagues  of  the  Egyptians," 
and  gravely  running  a  fanciful  analogy  between  a 
given  precept  and  a  given  plague!     The  fact  is, 


TEE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  75 

that  even  the  more  learned  Fathers  (Augustine  had 
little  Greek  and  no  Hebrew  learning)  were  prevent- 
ed by  certain  valid  causes  from  taking  a  point  of 
view  whence  they  could  properly  appreciate  the 
relations  of  the  old  dispensation  and  the  new.  The 
reasons  were  these :  A  good  knowledge  of  Hebrew 
was  rare.  Judaism  was  only  known  to  the  Chris- 
tians of  those  ages  in  its  worst  phase  of  Pharisee- 
ism,  because  all  truly-believing  Jews,  of  the  type  of 
Symeon,  Anna,  Matthew,  etc.,  had  gladly  acceded 
to  Christianity  and  been  absorbed  into  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  Hence  it  was  a  natural  mistake  to 
confound  the  true  Old-Testament  religion  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  with  the  apostate  Judaism  they  ^vitness- 
ed  around  them  in  these  professed  advocates  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  to  misconceive  the  divinely- 
established  worship  of  the  old  dispensation  accord- 
ing to  the  spurious  forms  to  which  it  was  now 
perverted  after  its  fulfillment  in  the  new  dispen- 
sation. It  was  easy  for  Christians,  witnessing  the 
typical  worship  only  in  these  spurious  anachron- 
isms, to  overlook  the  fact  that  there  had  been  a 
time  when  it  had  been  of  divine  appointment, 
spiritual  and  evangelical.  Third  :  The  Christians 
knew  of  Jews  only  as  the  murderers  of  the  Lord, 
as  stubborn  and  embittered  opponents  of  his  gos- 
pel (whether  as  revealed  in  their  own  Old  Testa- 
ment or  in  the  New),  as  systematic  slanderers  of 
the  Church  and  as  instigators  of  pagan  persecu- 
tions.     This  odious  attitude  of  all  the  professed 


76  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

advocates  of  the  Old  Testament  could  not  but  prej- 
udice the  Christians'  apprehension  of  their  Script- 
ures. To  these  causes  must  be  added,  in  the  fourth 
place,  the  perverse,  metaphorical  and  mystical  plan 
of  interpreting  Scripture,  and  especially  Old-Testa- 
ment Scripture,  which  the  Fathers  so  soon  imbibed, 
and  which  they  saw  carried  to  such  extremes  by 
the  rabbinical  scholars.  When  we  consider  these 
causes,  we  cease  to  Avonder  that  the  early  Christian 
writers  misconceived  the  proper  relations  of  the  Old 
Testament  to  the  New,  or  that  they  uttered  on  this 
subject  many  ambiguities  and  errors. 

If,  now,  a  Father  is  found  saying  that  the  apos- 
tles "abolished  the  Sabbath,"  he  is  to  be  under- 
stood, not  as  meaning  that  the  apostles  abrogated  the 
fourth  commandment — a  statement  which  can  be 
found  in  no  respectable  Christian  writer — but  he  is 
thinking  only  of  the  rabbinical  seventh  day,  with 
its  senseless  and  unscriptural  superstitions.  This 
is  the  simple  key  to  all  these  patristic  citations. 

Some  of  the  prelatic  enemies  of  our  Christian 
Sabbath  lay  much  stress  on  the  assertion  that  none  of 
the  Fathers  expressly  trace  the  Christian  observance 
of  the  Lord's  day  to  the  fourth  commandment. 
What  if  they  do  not  ?  This  is,  after  all,  only  neg- 
ative testimony,  which  proves  nothing  positive. 
W^e  point,  on  the  opposite  hand,  to  the  fact  that 
none  of  the  Fathers  deny  the  continued  authority  of 
the  fourth  commandment  in  its  essential  substance. 
AYe  hear   the  wisest  of    them  asserting  that   the 


TWE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  77 

sanctification  of  one  seventh  part  of  our  time  in 
the  observance  of  the  first  clay  is  of  divine  author- 
ity through  the  apostles.  We  hear  Eusebius,  the 
most  learned  of  them  all,  say  that  Christy  by  the 
new  covenant,  translated  and  transferred  the  feast  of 
the  Sabbath  to  the  first  day,  or  Lord^s  day,  and  that 
all  the  Christians  in  the  world  accordingly  have  trans- 
ferred the  Sabbath  duties  to  that  day.  Is  not  this 
virtually  saying  the  essential  thing — that  the  sanc- 
tification of  the  Lord's  day  is  the  Christian's  com- 
pliance with  the  fourth  commandment? 

A  comprehensive  view  of  these  testimonies  suf- 
ficiently shows  what  was  the  opinion  and  what  the 
usage  of  the  early  Christians.  As  the  Dark  Ages 
approached,  sound  knowledge  of  the  Hebrew  liter- 
ature became  very  rare ;  few  could  read  the  Old  Tes- 
tament in  the  original  language,  and  the  embittered 
and  sinful  prejudices  of  the  Christians  against  the 
Jews  had  their  influence  in  making  the  former  in- 
different to  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  Hence  great 
ignorance  of  the  old  dispensation  and  of  its  relations 
to  the  new  sprang  up.  It  was  natural  that  the 
grounds  of  Sabbath  observance  should  then  be 
misunderstood.  Superstition  was  then  rapidly  in- 
creasing, and  saints'  days  and  holy  days  of  human 
invention  first  rivaled  and  then  surpassed  God's 
own  day  in  the  veneration  of  the  people.  When 
the  great  Reformation  came,  many  of  the  Reform- 
ers remained  under  the  error  which  confounded 
the  Lord's  day  with  the  Church's  superstitious  holy 


78  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH 

days,  and  when  they  threw  off  the  trammels  of  su- 
perstition, unfortunately  they  cast  away  the  divine 
obligation  of  the  Sabbath  with  them. 

When  we  see  some  of  the  Protestant' churches 
and  divines  of  Europe  deliberately  defending  world- 
ly amusements  (after  public  worship)  on  the  Lord's 
day,  we  should  not  do  injustice  to  the  piety  and  con- 
scientiousness which  many  of  them  show  in  other 
things,  nor  should  we  condemn  errors  which  they 
justify  to  themselves  by  arguments  which  they  sin- 
cerely though  erroneously  believe,  as  severely  as  the 
profane  abuse  of  the  Sabbath  committed  by  some 
in  our  country  against  their  own  clear  convictions. 
Yet  the  deplorable  fact  remains  that  these  unscript- 
ural  views  about  the  divine  authority  of  the  Sab- 
bath have  been  the  bane  of  Protestantism.  They 
cause  and  perpetuate  much  of  th^  irreligion  and 
skepticism  which  deform  Protestant  Europe  in 
many  of  its  parts.  It  is  historically  true  that  the 
vitality  and  holiness  of  the  Church  are  usually  in 
proportion  to  its  reverence  for  the  Sabbath.  The 
Sabbath-keeping  churches  and  generations  have 
been  the  holy  and  zealous  ones. 

This  recurring  fact  may  remind  us  of  another  ar- 
gument :  that  the  necessity  of  a  Sabbath  day  is  writ- 
ten in  man's  very  nature.  The  same  God  who  laid 
the  foundation  for  its  observance  in  his  unchange- 
able law  for  all  nations  and  dispensations  has  also 
laid  the  foundation  for  it  in  the  faculties  of  man's 
body  and  mind,  and  even  in  the  nature  of  the  brutes 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  79 

which  work  for  man.  This  truth  has  received  re- 
markable confirmation  in  this  age,  not  only  from 
Christian  teachers,  but  from  physicians,  statesmen, 
historians  and  business-men.  Experience  has  taught 
us  that  neither  man's  body  nor  his  soul,  nor  the  beast 
which  is  his  servant,  was  made  by  the  Creator  to  work 
seven  days  in  the  week.  The  attempt  to  do  so  brings 
upon  the  body  lassitude,  nervous  excitability,  dis- 
ease, premature  old  age,  and  often  sudden  death, 
and  on  the  mind  morbid  excitement,  impatience, 
rashness,  blindness  of  judgment,  and  not  seldom 
lunacy.  The  very  beast  of  burden  can  do  more 
labor  without  injury  in  six  days  than  by  working 
all  the  seven.  An  army  can  be  carried  farther  upon 
a  long  march  in  six  days  than  in  seven.  It  is  well 
known  that  the  merchant  who  spends  his  Sabbaths 
in  his  counting-house  or  in  worldly  excitements  is 
liable  to  become  a  bankrupt,  because  the  privation 
of  that  recurring  sacred  calm  which  God  enjoins  in 
his  word  and  in  Nature  leaves  his  mind  and  heart 
unhinged.  The  professional  man  who  devotes  his 
Sabbaths  to  his  study  ends  not  seldom  in  lunacy 
or  in  suicide. 

Again :  As  a  social  and  moral  institution  the 
weekly  Sabbath  is  precious.  It  is  a  quiet  domes- 
tic reunion  for  the  bustling  sons  of  toil.  It  brings 
around  a  period  of  neatness  and  decency,  when  the  soil 
of  weekly  labor  is  laid  aside  and  men  meet  each  other 
amid  the  proprieties  of  the  sanctuary  and  the  sacred 
repose  of  home  to  renew  their  social  affections.     It 


80  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

enforces  a  vacation  in  those  earthly  and  turbulent 
affections  which  would  otherwise  become  morbid 
and  excessive. 

But,  above  all,  the  Sabbath  is  essential  for  man's 
spiritual  welfare.  God  found  it  necessary  in  Para- 
dise for  his  innocent  creatures,  necessary  for  holy 
patriarchs  and  prophets,  and  necessary  for  Chris- 
•tians.  A  creature  subject  to  the  law  of  habit,  finite 
in  his  faculties,  compelled  by  the  conditions  of  his 
existence  to  divide  his  cares  between  earth  and 
heaven,  cannot  accomplish  his  destiny  without  an 
authoritative  distribution  of  his  time  between  the 
two  worlds.  When  we  remember  that  men  are 
now  carnal  and  by  nature  ungodly,  ever  prone  to 
avert  their  eyes  from  heaven  to  earth  ;  when  we  see 
so  much  of  mundane  affection,  so  much  of  the  eager 
craving  and  bustle  of  worldliness,  enticing  to  an  in- 
fringement of  the  claims  of  heaven,— we  see  the  ab- 
solute necessity  of  such  a  division.  But,  obviously, 
if  such  a  sacred  season  is  necessary,  then  it  must  be 
marked  off  by  divine  authority,  and  not  by  a  sort 
of  convention  on  man's  part.  Do  we  not  see  that 
even  the  divine  sanction  is  insufficient  among  many 
who  profess  to  admit  it  ?  If  the  Sabbath  be  ground- 
ed only  in  .human  agreement,  the  license  which  men 
will  allow  themselves  in  infringing  its  claims  will 
at  last  effectually  abrogate  the  whole.  Such  is  the 
lamentable  result  to  which  a  Sunday  of  man's 
appointment  has  actually  come  in  more  than  one 
land,  both  Protestant  and  Koman  Catholic.     The 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  81 

most  striking  confirmation  of  the  whole  argument 
may  be  seen  at  this  time  in  a  part  of  Protestant 
Germany,  where,  after  God's  Sabbath  was  repudi- 
ated, the  Sunday  of  man's  device  has  slipped  away 
also,  leaving  the  populace  alike  without  a  weekly 
rest  and  without  Christianity.  Experience  proves 
that  to  neglect  the  Sabbath  day  is  virtually  to 
neglect  religion. 

We  have  thus  found  the  Sabbath  law  written  by 
the  same  divine  Hand  on  man's  nature  and  on  the 
pages  of  the  Bible. 

The  chief  attention  in  this  discussion  has  been 
given  to  this  point :  That  the  duty  of  keeping  holy 
the  Lord's  day  is  of  perpetual  and  moral  obligation 
on  all  men.  It  is  by  no  means  to  be  understood 
that  this  duty  is  hard  to  be  seen  by  the  plain  Chris- 
tian because  many  objections  have  been  solved  and 
many  explanations  made  by  us  in  reaching  this  con- 
clusion. It  is  not  any  lack  of  clearness  in  the  duty 
which  has  made  us  deem  this  long  discussion  useful, 
but  it  is  the  pertinacity  with  which  error  has  sought 
to  obscure  God's  truth.  We  have  weighed  the  objec- 
tions patiently,  candidly,  thoroughly — not  because 
they  really  deserved  weighing,  but  only  because  a  sad 
experience  shows  their  power  of  deceiving.  We 
wished  to  clear  away  the  last  shadow  of  doubt 
from  God's  command.  Yet  the  fair  and  obedient 
mind  may  reach  the  knowledge  of  it,  if  the  caviler 
will  only  leave  him  unbiased,  by  a  very  short  and 
simple  process.     There  stands  the  command,  "  Ee- 

6 


82  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

member  the  Sabbath  day,  to  keep  it  holy,"  in  the 
Decalogue.  That  law  was  never  meant  for  change. 
Then  the  substance  of  it  must  bind  me  in  this  last 
dispensation  just  as  it  has  bound  all  men  from  Adam. 
The  matter  is  just  as  plain  as  '^Thou  shalt  not  kill," 
"  Thou  shalt  have  no  other  gods  before  me." 

It  was  worth  the  time  and  toil  for  us  to  reach  this 
settled  conviction  of  a  continuing  divine  obligation 
for  the  Sabbath.  Its  proper  observance  can  never 
be  secured  in  any  other  way.  It  is  a  "  Thus  saith 
the  Lord,"  and  this  alone,  which  binds  the  con- 
science and  spurs  the  heart  of  every  true  Christian. 
Let  the  intimate  conviction  of  this  divine  warrant 
for  the  holy  day  be  established  in  the  minds  of 
Christian  people  against  all  the  doubts  and  quib- 
bles which  have  infested  parts  of  Christendom  since 
the  Dark  Ages,  and  all  men  that  really  fear  God  will 
begin  to  sanctify  his  day.  Hence  w:e  close  this  essay 
with  the  feeling  that  if  this  conviction  is  established, 
little  more  remains  to  be  done  except  to  invoke  the 
aid  of  divine  grace  for  assistance  in  executing  our 
convictions  of  duty. 

The  proof  which  is  here  presented  of  the  nature 
of  the  Sabbath  is  the  best  answer  to  the  question. 
How  ought  it  to  be  kept?  Let  conscience  and 
heart  respond-  to  God's  requirement  that  his  day 
be  hallowed  by  us,  and  the  details  will  be  easily 
arranged. 

But  the  answer  to  this  question  of  details  given 
in  the  Westminster  Confession  is  so  precise  and  so 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  83 

scriptural  that  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  repeat  it:  We 
must  "not  only  observe  an  holy  rest  all  the  day  from 
our  own  works,  words  and  thoughts  about  our  own 
worldly  employments  and  recreations,  but  also  be 
taken  up  the  whole  time  in  the  public  and  private 
exercises  of  his  worship  and  in  the  duties  of  neces- 
sity and  mercy/^ 

A  day  consists  of  twenty-four  hours,  and  when 
God  commands  us  to  sanctify  one  day  to  him,  as  we 
devote  the  other  six  to  ''all  our  own  work,"  the 
honest  conscience  will  find  no  difficulty  in  conclud- 
ing that  holy  time  should  not  be  abridged  by  unne- 
cessary sleep  or  by  needless  recreations  any  more 
than  any  other  day.  Let  true  faith  possess  the 
soul  with  a  scriptural  sense  of  the  arduous  task  to 
be  finished  in  the  believer's  own  life  in  fitting  it 
for  the  everlasting  Sabbath,  and  of  the  multitudi- 
nous claims  of  misery  and  ignorance  surrounding 
him  among  his  perishing  fellow-men,  and  the  holy 
occupations  of  the  Sabbath  day  will  appear  so  ur- 
gent and  so  numerous  that  there  will  be  no  room 
in  it  for  either  worldliness  or  indolence.  Let  us 
hear  the  law  and  the  testimony,  which  we  have 
shown  to  be  unrepealed: 

Deut.  5  :  12-14:  "Keep  the  sabbath  day  to  sanc- 
tify it,  as  the  Lord  thy  God  hath  commanded  thee. 
Six  days  thou  shalt  labor  and  do  all  thy  work :  but 
the  seventh  day  is  the  sabbath  of  the  Lord  thy  God ; 
in  it  thou  shalt  not  do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy  son, 
nor  thy  daughter,  nor  thy  man-servant,   nor  th\ 


84  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

maid-servant,  nor  thine  ox,  nor  thine  ass,  nor  any  of 
thy  cattle,  nor  thy  stranger  that  is  within  thy  gates/' 

Ex.  34  :  21 :  "  Six  days  thou  shalt  work,  but  on 
the  seventh  day  thou  shalt  rest :  in  earing-time  and 
in  harvest  thou  shalt  rest." 

Ps.  42  :  4:  "I  had  gone  with  the  multitude;  I 
went  with  them  to  the  house  of  God,  with  the  voice 
of  joy  and  praise,  with  a  multitude  that  kept  holy 
day." 

Neh.  13  :  15 :  "In  those  days  saw  I  in  Judah 
some  treading  wine-presses  on  the  sabbath,  and 
bringing  in  sheaves,  and  lading  asses ;  as  also  wine, 
grapes,  and  figs,  and  all  manner  of  burdens,  which 
they  brought  into  Jerusalem  on  the  sabbath  day; 
and  I  testified  against  them  in  the  day  wherein  they 
sold  victuals." 

Mark  2  :  27 :  "  The  sabbath  was  made  for  man, 
and  not  man  for  the  sabbath." 

Matt.  24  :  20  :  "  But  pray  ye  that  your  flight  be 
not  ...  on  the  sabbath  day." 

Luke  13  :  15,  16  (to  show  that  "works  of  neces- 
sity and  mercy,"  however  forbidden  by  rabbinical 
superstition,  were  always  consistent  with  the  fourth 
commandment  under  both  dispensations) :  "  Thou 
hypocrite,  doth  not  each  one  of  you  on  the  sab- 
bath loose  his  ox  or  his  ass  from  the  stall,  and  lead 
him  away  to  watering?  And  ought  not  this  woman, 
being  a  daughter  of  Abraham,  whom  Satan  hath 
bound,  lo,  these  eighteen  years,  be  loosed  from  this 
bond  on  the  sabbath  day  ?" 


TUB  CHRISTIAN  SABBATU.  85 

E,ev.  1  :  10 :  "I  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's 
day." 

Isa.  58  :  13,  14:  ''If  thou  turn  away  thy  foot 
from  the  sabbath,  from  doing  thy  pleasure  on  my 
holy  day ;  and  call  the  sabbath  a  delight,  the  holy 
of  the  Lord,  honorable ;  and  shalt  honor  him,  not 
doing  thine  own  ways,  nor  finding  thine  own  pleas- 
ure, nor  speaking  thine  own  words:  then  shalt  thou 
delight  thyself  in  the  Lord;  and  I  will  cause  thee  to 
ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth,  and  feed  thee 
with  the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  father :  for  the  mouth 
of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it." 

IV.  The  increasing  disregard  of  the  Lord's  day 
in  the  United  States  demands  a  renewed  application 
of  the  authority  of  the  civil  law  to  support  right 
customs.  The  American  commonwealths  usually 
have  Sabbath  law^s.  These  do  not,  indeed,  compel 
the  citizens,  under  any  civil  pains  or  penalties,  to 
attend  the  churches  or  the  sacraments;  nor  do 
these  laws  attempt  to  prescribe  a  spiritual  use  of 
the  day.  The  latter  is  the  function  of  the  Church 
alone.  But  the  State  closes  all  her  own  halls  of  leg- 
islation and  justice,  and  gives  an  entire  rest  to  her 
own  servants,  on  the  Christian  Sabbath.  She  also 
enjoins  upon  all  citizens  a  cessation  of  all  forms 
of  secular  employments  on  that  day,  except  such 
as  are  unavoidable,  so  as  to  secure  for  all  a  week- 
ly rest  and  the  opportunity  to  keep  religion's  holy 
day   to    God    if  they    desire    it.     In    how   many 


86  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH 

ways  even  this  slender  respect  of  civil  society  to 
God's  day  is  now  impaired  the  reader  knows  but 
too  well.  Especially  is  the  law  of  rest  trodden 
upon  by  those  great  carrying  corporations  which 
seem  to  feel  themselves  already  too  great  for  the  law. 
To  add  to  this  disorder,  large  numbers  of  our  cit- 
izens, composed  of  a  few  professed  atheists  and  infidels 
and  a  multitude  of  immigrants  from  states  abroad, 
where  the  Sabbath  has  been  long  dishonored,  now 
formally  attack  the  right  of  the  State  to  enact  any 
Sabbath  rest  or  to  enforce  it  by  civil  pains.  Their 
argument  is  plausible.  It  proceeds  from  the  thor- 
ough separation  and  independence  of  Church  and 
State  established  by  the  American  constitutions. 
These  documents  say  that  men  of  all  religions  and 
of  no  religion  shall  be  equal  before  the  law ;  that 
all  shall  enjoy  liberty  of  thought;  that  no  man 
shall  lose  any  privilege  which  the  other  citizens 
possess  by  reason  of  his  opinions  or  usages  about 
religion ;  that  it  shall  be  unlawful  for  the  State 
to  make  any  religious  establishment  of  any  relig- 
ion. From  this  position  the  enemies  of  the  Sab- 
bath proceed  thus :  "  The  Christian  Sabbath  is  no 
more  than  an  ecclesiastical  and  religious  institution. 
The  Jewish  Sabbath,  in  its  day,  was  only  a  tempo- 
rary and  typical  one.  The  churches  may  require 
an  observance  of  a  Sabbath  from  such  persons  as 
choose  to  join  them.  But  the  State  has  no  more 
right  to  pass  any  law  about  its  observance  than 
about  enforcing  attendance  on  any  other  Christian 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  87 

rite  or  vsacraraent.  Hence,  when  a  citizen  who  does 
not  believe  in  religion  or  its  holy  days  is  estopped 
from  his  lawful  labor  or  pleasure  on  such  days,  it 
is  an  infringement  of  his  guaranteed  freedom  of 
opinion.  The  loss  of  the  day^s  profit  is  of  the  na- 
ture of  a  fine  levied  against  hira  for  his  opinions, 
and  is  therefore  unconstitutional." 

Several  replies  to  this  argument  are  commonly 
heard  from  the  pious.  One  reply  has  been,  that, 
according  to  the  American  laws,  the  majority  are 
entitled  to  rule ;  and,  since  tlie  major  part  of  Amer- 
icans are  Protestant  Christians,  they  are  entitled  to 
enforce  Sabbath  laws.  But  this  argument  is  ruined 
by  two  rejoinders.  One  is,  that,  while  the  major- 
ity has  a  right  to  rule,  it  is  only  in  accordance  with, 
and  within  the  limits  of,  the  Constitution.  The 
other  is,  that  should  the  majority  in  America  ever 
become  infidel,  then,  by  the  -same  argument,  they 
would  have  as  good  a  right  to  pass  laws  prohibit- 
ing a  Sabbath. 

Again,  it  is  argued  that  our  Sabbath  laws  lay  no 
other  restriction  on  the  infidel  than  on  the  Chris- 
tian, and  that  therefore  they  are  just  and  equal. 
The  Christian  citizens  do  not  require  of  the  non- 
Christian  any  other  Sabbath  observance  than  what 
they  exact  of  themselves,  so  that  there  is  no  un- 
fairnass.  That  this  is  also  invalid  may  be  shown 
thus :  Let  us  suppose  Papists  in  the  majority  here, 
and  forbidding  Protestants  to  labor  on  their  numerous 
saints'  days,  whose  observance  we  regard  as  wholly 


m  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

superstitious.  They  could  say  that  their  requirement 
was  fair,  because  they  observed  it  themselves.  But 
we  should  regard  it  as  oppressive,  because  we  should 
find  ourselves  prohibited  by  others'  superstitions 
from  acts  to  which  we  had  a  moral  right.  Just  so 
argue  the  infidel  immigrants  against  our  Sabbath 
laws. 

Again,  we  hear  the  argument  put  thus :  Although 
Church  and  State  are  separate  here,  yet  the  Amer- 
ican is  a  Ch7'istian  people.  The  country  was  settled 
by  Christians.  The  great  mass  are  professed  Chris- 
tians. Hence,  the  immigrant  who  finds  himself  a 
dissentient  must  submit  to  this  Christian  feature  of 
the  society  whose  hospitality  he  enjoys.  If  he  does 
not  like  this  usage  of  ours,  he  is  free  to  go  away. 
But,  unfortunately,  the  State,  which  enforces  these 
Sunday  laws  and  which  invites  these  dissentients  to 
become  citizens  among  us,  has  made  an  express  con- 
stitutional covenant  with  them  that  they  shall  in- 
cur, at  the  hands  of  the  State,  no  restriction  or 
limit  of  privilege  whatever  on  any  religious  ground. 
Now,  if  any  man  has  a  natural,  secular  right  to 
live  without  a  Sabbath,  this  objection  is  formidable. 

Once  more :  it  is  urged  that  Christians,  conscien- 
tiously believing  it  their  own  duty  to  observe  the 
Sabbath,  have  a  civic  right,  on  the  lowest  grounds, 
to  observe  the  day,  and  to  be  protected  from  mo- 
lestation by  the  amusements  and  employments  of 
those  who  care  nothing  for  it.  The  infidel  replies 
that  it  is  as  much  the  Christian's  business  to  take 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  89 

his  psalm-singing  out  of  the  way  of  the  worldling's 
Sunday  theatre  or  brass  band.  He  says  that  in  a 
non-Christian  State,  such  as  the  American,  the  one 
stands  on  as  lawful  a  footing  as  the  other. 

But  a  more  tenable  plea  for  the  Sabbath  laws  of 
the  State  is  found  in  the  facts  noticed  above,  that 
man's  natural  constitution  requires  a  weekly  rest. 
Hence,  even  regarding  the  State  as  non- Christian, 
and  as  possessed  of  no  functions  except  protecting 
temporal  and  earthly  interests,  we  may  claim  for 
it  a  right  to  legislate  a  rest  for  man  and  beast  on 
grounds  of  health  and  temporal  welfare.  This  is  a 
sound  argument,  but  it  only  rests  our  Sabbath  laws 
on  a  hygienic  ground.  It  is  as  when  a  State  enacts 
that  children  and  minor  servants  shall  not  be  kept 
at  work  in  shops  and  factories  more  than  a  healthy 
number  of  hours. 

But  the  real  ground  of  the  State  Sabbath  laws 
was  touched  when  we  raised  the  question  on  the 
previous  page :  Whether  any  reasonable  creature, 
a  subject  of  civil  society,  has  a  natural  right  to 
live  without  the  Sabbath?  We  answer:  He  has 
not.  Whether  he  chooses  to  profess  the  Christian 
religion  or  not  (a  point  on  which  the  State  has  no 
right  to  dictate),  he  is  bound  simply  as  a  rational 
creature  of  God  by  the  Sabbath  law  of  the  human 
race.  The  positions  by  which  this  argument  is  con- 
structed are  these : 

1.  While  the  plan  of  redemption  is  not  essential 
to  ground  the  validity  of  a  State  authority,  the  doc- 


96  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

trine  of  natural  theism  is  necessary.  On  the  atheistic 
theory  no  reasonable  or  obligatory  basis  can  be  found 
for  civic  duties  and  allegiance;  no  solid  answer  can 
be  given  to  the  question,  "Why  am  I  bound  to  obey 
the  civil  magistrate?"  nor  can  any  basis  of  morality 
safely  be  laid  down.  If  atheism  were  true,  men 
would  be  only  ingenious  animals ;  convenience 
might  prompt  them  to  feed  in  herds,  but  they 
would  no  more  be  suitable  subjects  for  civil  so- 
ciety than  other  brutes.  Civil  society  is,  while  a 
temporal,  essentially  a  moral,  institution.  Moral- 
ity can  be  established  only  on  theism. 

2.  The  Sabbath,  as  first  given  to  the  human  race, 
was  an  ordinance  of  natural  theism.  It  was  given 
to  man  before  he  was  a  sinner  or  needed  a  Saviour. 
It  was  equally  enjoined  on  all  races,  and  at  first  ob- 
served by  all.  Here  the  reader  need  only  be  referred 
to  the  argument  of  our  first  section.  The  Sabbath, 
as  an  institution  given  to  mea  for  all  ages  and  dis- 
pensations, even  including  that  of  Paradise,  was  and 
is  God's  means  for  maintaining  in  the  human  family 
his  knowledge  and  fear  as  our  Maker,  Ruler  and 
future  Judge.  But  on  that  fear  all  moral  institu- 
tions repose — the  family,  the  State,  as  truly  as  the 
Church.  Therefore,  men  are  naturally  bound  to 
keep  the  Sabbath  simply  as  men,  and  not  only 
as  Christians. 

3.  After  man  fell  and  came  to  need  redemption 
the  Sabbath  was  also  continued  by  God  as  a  means 
of  grace  and  a  gospel  institute.     But  this  did  not 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  91 

repeal  or  exclude  its  original  use.  The  professed 
Christian  has  two  reasons  for  observing  the  Sab- 
bath ;  every  human  being  has  one. 

4.  The  civil  legislator  makes  use  of  the  books 
of  Genesis  and  Exodus  in  supporting  the  propriety 
of  his  State  laws  for  the  Sabbath,  not  as  a  code  of 
redemption,  but  as  an  authentic  history  of  man's 
origin  and  early  code  of  natural  theism.  As  such, 
it  is  supported  by  all  authentic  tradition  and  his- 
tory, by  the  teachings  of  experience  and  the  ap- 
proval of  all  wise  and  virtuous  legislators  who 
have  known  their  contents.  There  is  the  same 
species  of  reason  why  this  sacred  history  should 
guide  the  legislation  of  all  States,  as  for  the  Brit- 
ish Parliament's  guiding  itself  by  Magna  Charta. 

This  argument,  it  will  be  noticed,  gives  no  pre- 
text for  any  intermingling  of  the  State  with  the 
Christian  Church  or  any  denomination  in  it.  The 
Church  is  the  spiritual  organism  of  redemption. 
The  State  is  the  secular,  but  moral  and  righteous, 
organism  for  safety,  justice  and  welfare  in  this  life. 
The  State  is  not  necessarily  Christian.  But  it  is 
necessarily  theistic,  because  on  the  atheistic  theory 
its  basis,  its  rights  and  its  healthy  existence  are  lost. 
Hence,  while  the  Church  has  its  use  of  the  Sabbath 
as  the  institute  of  redemption  and  means  of  grace, 
the  State  has  its  use  of  it  as  the  institute  of  right- 
eousness and  the  natural  knowledge  and  fear  of 
God.  The  Church  accordingly  enjoins  and  seeks 
to  enforce  (by  her  spiritual  means)  on  her  members 


92  THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH. 

the  right  spiritual  improvement  of  the  day.  The 
State,  by  its  secular  power,  enjoins  and  enforces  the 
outward  rest  of  the  day,  so  that  the  people  may  (if 
they  will)  use  it  to  learn  of  God  and  of  his  righteous 
law,  to  cultivate  morals  and  decency,  to  rest  their  fac- 
ulties of  body  and  mind,  and  to  enjoy  the  ennobling 
and  wholesonie  moral  influences  of  the  family  and 
fireside. 

On  this  theory  no  man's  franchises  as  a  citizen 
are  abridged  on  account  of  his  failure  to  adopt  a 
Christian  profession  of  any  name  whatsoever.  But 
on  this  theory  we  candidly  avow  the  State  does  dis- 
countenance atheism  as  her  necessary  and  radical 
antagonist.  Should  either  Church  or  State  there- 
fore persecute  an  avowed  atheist  ?  By  no  means. 
Both  should  treat  him  with  pity  and  with  all  the 
forbearance  compatible  with  the  duty  of  self-pres- 
ervation. But  the  State  has  the  same  right  to  re- 
strain him  from  destroying  society  by  his  atheism 
which  a  householder  has  to  prevent  a  lunatic  son 
from  burning  down  the  children's  dwelling-house. 
To  this  catastrophe  the  systematic  neglect  of  the 
Sabbath  naturally  tends,  because  it  tends  to  the 
forgetfulness  of  God,  the  Ruler  of  mankind;  and 
that  such  is  its  tendency  experience  is  the  best 
proof.  The  only  atheistic  communities  which  have 
ever  had  a  permanent  existence  in  the  world  have 
been  mere  hordes  of  savages,  like  the  Australians 
and  Hottentots.  All  the  civilized  pagan  nations 
of  ancient  and  modern  times  had  at  least  polythe- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SABBATH.  93 

isni  as  the  basis  of  their  morals  and  government, 
and  when  religious  faith  was  overflowed  by  skep- 
ticism in  Athens  and  Rome,  those  republics  fell. 
Twice  France  has  seen  attempts  to  found  a  civil 
government  on  atheistic  principles.  The  results 
were  the  two  Reigns  of  Terror.  Russia  now  has 
an  atheistic  sect  seeking  to  establish  a  new  com- 
monwealth, and  its  favorite  measure  is  assassi- 
nation. 

The  sum,  then,  is:  Theism  is  essential  to  the 
State ;  the  Sabbath  is  essential  to  maintain  the- 
ism. Therefore  it  is  that  the  State  can  do  no  less 
than  maintain  an  outward  Sabbath  rest. 


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